


Long Way Home

by Zveltc



Series: Hydrochloric Acid [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy elements, Gaming Terms, Gen, Isekai, a bunch of typos apparently, canon to hcla series, honestly do you expect me to remember all that SDFHJGFD, i havent written in so long im noob, i think??, inconsistent logic/rules, yo I can feel my writing become progressively more stale for some reason??? lmaoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-01-18 10:30:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21274781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zveltc/pseuds/Zveltc
Summary: Theology found themselves waking up in a strange forest, donned in different clothes and weapons. After discovering they were transported to another world, they set out on a journey to search for clues about their mysterious circumstance. It's not that bad so far, and their newfound skills are pretty useful. What's the worst that can happen?"You fools," Janice boomed as she towered over the healers, "how did you even lose your sticks."'Cecilia shrugged indifferently, while Tiffany replied, "I dunno, ask the other me."
Series: Hydrochloric Acid [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533614
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	1. Yo, We Just Got Isekai-ed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Rather Long Prologue pt. 1

They had absolutely no idea where they were. No clue. Nada. Zilch.

“So,” Janice said slowly, “just to confirm: we all went to sleep last night without doing any weird ritual or summoning or anything, right?” She turned her head in an attempt to see through the greenery around her, the motion almost owl-like, but all it did was make her hair sprouts wave comically back and forth.

Right as she finished speaking, all heads turned to Sally, who stared back blankly and answered without missing a beat, “Yes.”

“The forest reminds me of the one in our city,” Han added, gesturing to the clusters of trees surrounding them. “If it wasn’t for the weird clothes we’re wearing, I would've thought we camped here and forgot about it for a moment.”

As if on cue, everyone looked down to examine themselves. They all wore clothes fitting for characters in those online RPG games, with various weapons lying next to them in the grass. Faces of curiosity soon turned into interest as they each looked over their garments and weapons, tracing fingers over the foreign designs and holding them up to look at it from all angles—that is, until their attention all fell on one particular person.

“Tiff… is that… a stick?” Cecilia asked, voicing the question of the entire group.

The literal tree twig, held by three short fingers, shook pathetically in the conveniently timed breeze. Tiffany squinted unsurely at the wooden thing. “I think I picked up the wrong thing.” The next few seconds were spent looking around for a hidden weapon that might have been concealed in the somewhat tall grass, but there was nothing to be found. She sighed in disappointment, dropping the twig. “Do I just not have a weapon, then?”

“There’s always the option to fight with your bare hands,” Sally offered, though her confused expression and slight tone of uncertainty did not help provide any comfort. “Maybe it evolves.”

Dat sat cross-legged on the ground and took off the large, glove-like things from his hands, placing them on the grass before him. “Or she’s a noob and got a sucky stick for a weapon.”

“Wha—” Tiffany spluttered, “Cece has a stick too!” She pointed accusingly at the long, wooden pole—simple and without any designs or anything fancy as decoration—that rested in Cecilia’s hands. At an angle, it looked like a large tree branch that was sloppily carved to resemble a pole. “A longer stick!” 

Her fuming went ignored as everyone else began to examine each other’s belongings with great interest. “I’m assuming these are my weapons,” Sally said, holding up a pair of scythes (well, they were scythe-like to her) attached to each other with a chain at the end. Swirls ran down the grey blade in demonic-like patterns, ending at the base with a symbol resembling a pentagram. “Also, these clothes—” she raised her hands a bit to show the sleeves of her navy blue tunic, which was held together by the belt secured tightly around her waist and paired with the white pants tucked into dark brown combat boots. “—I look like some guard wannabe.”

“I think mine are pretty cool.” Han pulled out her twin swords, which had a thin purple stripe along the sharp side of the blade, and sheathed them back into the scabbards hanging off both sides of her hips. “I can move comfortably too.” Compared to Sally’s more formal clothing, Han’s blue-purple-clothed torso was covered by a silver chest plate, matched with gauntlets, pants and combat boots the same as Sally’s, and pieces of armour around her knees.

It was then that Nic emerged from the trees in the back, a large, black recurve bow hanging across his chest. A quiver filled with simple arrows hung off his belt on one hip. His tunic, which had patterns resembling a dragon’s fire, grey pants, and shin-high boots gave off the impression of an archer from the medieval ages. He silently made his way over and offered a single arrow to each person, before settling down beside a tree. “I was hoping I’d find other people here,” he said. “It was lonely over there.”

“At least y’all don’t look poor. I look like a whole peasant,” Janice sighed as she lifted the hem of her long pastel blue dress, which nearly reached her ankles. “Why do I have a dress? That’s so inefficient?! Where’s the protection?! The efficiency??” She attempted to walk with her low-heel shoes and managed to trip over thin air with a screech, a large metal disc falling after her. It rolled in the grass before falling flat on the ground, displaying its intricate carvings and glowing light pink aura. “What’s this thing even for?”

“You cast spells using magic and that disc as your medium, I think.” Dat’s heavy metal boots clattered as he took a step towards the disc. Other than his casual jacket and jeans, he looked a little ridiculous with the oversized powerfists, which glowed a soft orange hue. “Everything looks a lot similar to the games I play.”

Tiffany stared at the long robes covering her and sighed. “Cece and I literally look like nuns.” She paused, then squinted. “Well. she looks more like one than me, just more pink with a shorter skirt, but you get the point.”

“Why am I even a nun??” Cece lifted the flaps of cloth over her collarbones and squinted at the designs. “Oh, hey, I have satanic circles on me.”

Cecilia’s robes were more like a long white cloak over a pale pink dress of some sort, reaching right above her knees and giving a full display of her brown boots. A belt around her waist held the robe together. The cuffed sleeves, cloth stretched across her upper torso, and mini cloak covering her shoulders gave off a more classic look. Her wooden staff produced no special effects as it was waved around.

“Nice,” Tiffany replied as she examined her own robes: a soft yellow cloak with multiple vertical slits thrown over a pine green tunic-like top, dark grey pants tucked into white boots, and a belt with a small sheath hanging from her back, presumably for carrying a stick. “I guess I really do have a stick for a weapon,” she muttered dejectedly.

The most noticeable thing was the dragon-shaped emblem on their clothes, standing out no matter how many other designs there were, but they figured it would be like their HCLA sign and paid no attention to it.

“We should proba—” Dat was interrupted by the rustling of leaves from the bushes not far from them. Turning around, he stared at the moving furry creatures that emerged and approached rapidly in their direction. At first, they seemed like frightened animals that coincidentally ran towards them, but one glance at the sharp teeth—almost the length of an index finger, he noted, mildly disturbed—and feral eyes had him sliding on his large gloves.

“Ooo, bunny?” Han asked, eyes lighting up at the vaguely rabbit-like creature, but her excitement soon morphed into something akin to unsettlement when one let out a particularly shrill scream. “Uh… nevermind.” She followed Dat and drew out her swords, moving into a defensive position. The motion was smooth and somehow felt familiar to her.

Janice hid behind the nearest people, who happened to be Cecilia and Tiffany. “What’s going on??” she asked. “Why are there feral rats coming at us??”

Tiffany blinked. “Those are supposed to be rabbits, I think.”

“I don’t know,” Sally grunted as one of the creatures pounced on her and blocked the attack with the handle of a scythe. The chains rattled loudly as she wildly waved her weapons around, but some part of her instincts was correcting her grip and swings subconsciously, allowing her attack with fluidity despite her lack of combat knowledge. When she moved to dodge a leaping ball of fur, her legs pushed off the ground with more force than intended, and she found herself spinning into the air in a complex motion she didn’t even know she was capable of. “What…”

One rabbit got particularly close to mauling Han’s face off when she stared at Sally in amazement, and she retaliated with a random swing of her right sword, still unused to fighting with something in both hands at once. She veered her sword away to keep it from cutting Sally when they got too close, and the blade somehow cut smoothly through the air from the sudden change and spun in her hand thrice without dropping, effectively slicing off a rabbit’s ear in the process and creating a deadly circle of sharpness. “Huh? How’d I do that?” She stared at her other sword and attempted to replicate the motion but fumbled and dropped it instead.

Dat sent a rabbit-thing towards a tree with a punch, and after it jumped back towards him, he punched at it again, causing his powerfists to glow bright orange, killing it when it slammed against the tree once more. He stared at his right hand, wondering where such power came from and why it felt like something was pulling at his mind. He decided to figure it out later. “These things are weak!” he called out to the rest of the group. “I think I did something just now.”

“Stay away!” Janice yelled at a rabbit that got too close, hand clutching someone’s—she was too terrified to pay attention—as kicked at the thing behind her. She took her disc and tried to whack it, but it only managed to inflict a small scratch, which angered the rabbit even more. Desperate, Janice used the flat side to smack it again, and right before she did, a weird tug pulled her arm outwards involuntarily. In her terrified state, she waved her arm around in hopes of scaring the creatures off with her supposed weapon.

A fireball hit it right in the face, killing it in two seconds.

“Woah, Janice, how’d you do that?” Han asked when she caught sight of the flaming ball from her peripheral vision.

“I don’t know!” Janice screamed as another rabbit lunged at her, apparently angry that she killed its friend. More fireballs appeared from the disc as she waved it like one would a fly swatter. “It just happened! I’m throwing fireballs?? _ What?? _”

Nic shot at a creature with his arrow, and after following the initial shot with five more, it died with a miserable cry, falling limply to the floor. It was a wonder how these things didn’t bleed when hit or cut, but there was no time to focus on that. He kicked away another and glanced at Janice before looking back at his bow and arrow. Eyes narrowing, he decided to test something.

Dat wasn’t paying much attention, focusing on punching and channeling that mysterious energy when a flash of yellow flew across the grass, setting it on fire. He traced the source back to Nic and nodded. It seemed that they could use magic. Janice most likely used it on accident, while Nic probably found a way to use it as he did.

“That looks so cool,” Han said excitedly to Sally as they fought back to back. “I wanna do magic too.”

“I think we can, but we just don’t know how?” Sally replied. When another bunny pounced at her, she imagined herself using magic to cut it in half. What she didn’t expect, though, was for a satanic circle to appear under it as it leapt into the air, and several chains emerged from the ground, wrapping around the bunny and pinning it to the ground. An invisible force moved her arms to fling one scythe at the bunny, immediately slicing it in half, leaving behind a curtain of black smoke.

“Sally!” Han—and Cecilia and Tiffany, who had been watching from the side and batting away rabbits with their sticks—gasped. _ “That’s so cool!” _

“I think you just have to think about it?” Sally said. She wasn’t sure what she did either, but the motion seemed to come to her more easily now. She did it once more, successfully killing another rabbit. “Think of yourself doing an attack, and you’ll feel it.”

Han nodded at Sally’s words like a scholar would a wise sage and went back to fighting. She spun around and slashed, moves becoming more complicated the more she hit, and soon she became an unstoppable twirling force of blades and all things sharp. “Cooool!!” They could hear her say.

“It really be like that,” Tiffany muttered to Cecilia as she stared at their pathetic sticks miserably. “We can’t even do anything. Look how lame we look.”

“Yeah, we suck.” Cecilia used her stick like a spear of some sort and tossed a rabbit far away from them. “Maybe we’ll get to do something?” She looked over to Han, who had somehow mastered a series of twirls that summoned a whirlwind of blades from the air. The daggers fell from the sky like rain, piercing through several rabbits and killing them immediately.

“Maybe…

“Wait, wait, I think I feel something.” (Non-existent) Eyebrows furrowing in concentration, Cecilia gathered some energy and channeled it through her stick, then aimed it at a rabbit. She and Tiffany stared expectantly at the hopping creature.

Nothing happened.

“...”

“...”

Tiffany sighed. “We suck.”

“Yeah, we suck.”

For the group (which basically meant everyone sans Cecilia and Tiffany), the rabbits were insanely easy to kill with their new skills, but they just had no idea how to use them. Some of the more powerful attacks drained more energy, which they learned to use less often, and there were multiple occasions where they had to pause to switch motions for chains of attacks that did not connect smoothly.

“What is going on,” Janice whispered confusedly as her fifty-something-eth fireball killed the last rabbit. “Fireballs?? Huh??”

“So I was right—Janice can use magic. And everyone else to some extent, I guess.” Dat turned to Tiffany and Cecilia, who were waving their sticks like angry beggars. “Well, almost everyone else.”

The offended chorus of “hey!” from said beggars went ignored.

“I can do this cool spin move!!” As if to make a point, Han leapt into the air, both swords in her hands with the blade pointing away from her thumbs, and spun in a motion resembling a somersault. The blades left behind a trail of blue flame-like effects as it cut through the air. “Sally’s is cool too!”

“I wanna see!!” Tiffany clapped her hands like a seal, squealing the same way a child receiving a Christmas present would. “I wanna seeee!”

Sighing, Sally clutched both scythes and extended her arms to for a T position. Just as Tiffany was about to cackle, a ball of dark energy swirled around her, and she levitated into the air. The dark mass became increasingly more violent and unstable as Sally did a flip in the air and kicked the ground, leaving a huge crater.

_ “That’s so cool!” _Cecilia joined Tiffany in her clapping; another person joined, and soon everyone was clapping at Sally.

“So I just imagine doing it?” Janice asked, staring at her disc. She turned back to Sally and Han. Teach me, oh great masters.”

“Try to imagine throwing a fireball,” Han suggested. “That’s what I did.”

Everyone watched Janice stare intensely at her disc, and seconds later, it erupted into flames, engulfing her entire hand. Janice screamed.

“My hand is on _ fire!” _ she screeched, flinging the disc out of her hand and waving the flaming hand. Alas, it did not help, as her hand remained to burn, and she began to run around aimlessly, all steps of the stop, drop, and roll technique leaving her brain. “Help! _ Help! _”

Han was the first to react. “Someone get water!”

“That’s a big fire,” Tiffany commented, as if someone wasn’t burning right before her. “Looks painful.”

As if her words had flipped a switch within Janice, she paused, then looked at her flaming hand again. “It doesn’t hurt?”

“Why would your own magic hurt you,” Dat said. “Wait, does it affect other people too?”

Lifting a finger, he gently poked the flames, only to retreat his hand with a pained hiss. “It does.”

“How do I get rid of this?” Janice waved her hand again, and this time everyone jumped back knowing it would harm them. “Someone help?”

Han unsheathed one of her swords and glanced at it. “I have a water ability, I think.” She swiped the tip over Janice’s hand, missing it by mere millimeters, and a small stream of water came out, extinguishing the fire. “I think it’s best you set your weapon on fire instead for now.”

“Okay...”

“Does anyone have any suggestions about what’s happening?” Sally asked.

“A dream?” Tiffany suggested.

Janice huffed. “Yeah, like the one page dream would happen again. I felt pain when one of those things bit me. Anything else?”

“I think we’ve been transported to another world,” Nic said. “Something like that.”

Dat was the one to initiate a search for any clues. “We should look around and try to find a way out of here first. Maybe we can find a town or person to ask for more info.”

Janice ooh-ed. “Dat, _ yore mind _.”

“I like how we’re all just, like, accepting this,” Cecilia said.

“We’ve had Janice kidnapped, gotten into some mafia conflict thing, and we’re a whole group of crackheads.” Tiffany waved her hand dismissively. “I’m sure we can handle at least this much.”

Nic waved his hand and gestured to the slowly darkening sky that loomed over them. They all stared at the moon peeking out from behind the in mild surprise; it was sunny only a while ago. Had they really been fighting those rabbit creatures for that long?

“I’m exhausted,” Sally grunted as she plopped down on the grass. Tiffany followed her, leaning her back against a tree with a huff.

“Me too.”

“You did, like, nothing.”

“Hush.”

“We should rest,” Han said. “Since it’s getting so dark, I think we should have night watching shifts in case anything tries to attack us again.”

Dat settled down not far from the campfire he somehow created in the center of the clearing they were resting in. The fire grew as a large number of leaves and twigs were dumped in, but it showed no other signs of spreading into a forest fire. “Good idea. I’ll go first. Y’all sleep.”

“Don’t you get the least sleep compared to everyone here?” Cecilia nudged him with her foot, which he batted away.

“I’m used to staying up late anyways. It’s fine.”

“Whatever you say.” Janice yawned loudly. “I’m gonna sleep. Night.” Without another word, she used her coat as a pillow and slept right on the spot.

Tiffany huddled next to a tree and muttered, “As expected of the queen of naps.”

The team ended up leaving the forest the next day via a clearly man-made path that led into the nearby town, and they were greeted by a crowd of people minding their own way around the roads as soon as they crossed the fancy wooden gates. It was bustling with townsfolk in every direction they looked, from the open markets that sold a variety of food and items, to the buildings that seemed medieval, almost game-like.

“Excuse me, miss, do you know where we are?” Janice asked the nearest lady, who greeted her with a kind, welcoming smile.

“Is something wrong, Janice? This is your town, Huhclah.” The woman looked almost worried as she stared up at her. “Surely, you haven’t forgotten your own town?”

Han made her way to the front of the group and patted Janice on the shoulder. “I apologise, ma’am. We were all ambushed and hit by a spell, which took away some of our memories,” she bluffed, putting on her most guilty face. “I hope you don’t mind helping us until we remember everything.” It was apparently a wrong move, because the look of slight concern quickly changed to downright devastation.

“Oh!” The lady gasped, obvious distress bleeding into the one word. Her panic attracted the attention of a few passersby, which the group had to wave away with awkward smiles. “Someone managed to attack the best of Dracheheim and managed to get away with it? Are we in trouble?!”

“No, no, miss, we managed to take care of him. It’s just out memories that have a slight problem,” Tiffany assured her, turning to the group. “Right, guys?

From the back, someone said, “You’ve always had a memory trouble, noob,” but it went ignored as she continued, “It would help if you gave a summary of important events in history.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you everything.” The lady shook her head solemnly. “We can’t all remember everything that’s happened. Nowadays, barely anyone knows how magic even works other than how we were blessed by the dragons to infuse magic from nature’s elements—that’s all I can recall from history lessons in the academy. I think there was a fight somewhere, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” After a pause, she added, “I’m Hesui, by the way. I live two houses from your headquarters and run a bakery.”

“Thank you, miss Hesui. Can you direct us to our headquarters, then?” Dat nodded when she pointed towards one end of the town, and he departed with a wave.

“From what I’ve gathered so far, we’re in a guild. We’re the strongest, so we must be in command or somewhere around there,” he summarised as they split into two groups of three. He was at the far left, and with the other two right beside him and the last three lined up behind, the group was almost like a moving wall, causing passersby to step to the side as they passed. 

“She mentioned something called Dracheheim. Is that our guild name?” Cecilia asked.

Nic spoke up from the back of the group, “Probably.”

“Yooo, look at that.” Tiffany pointed at the large building in front of them, which was covered with windows, balconies, and a large, metal door, covered by a giant gate. At the side of the door where a doorbell would usually be was a grey slab embedded into the navy blue walls, the edges glowing a faint hue of red. She gestured to the grey slab. “Is that how we get in?”

“Wait, I wanna try something.” Dat pressed his hand against the metal slab like a hand and fingerprint scanner, and seconds later, a holographic image popped up, displaying a familiar face.

“Katherine?”

“Oh, hey guys of this world, I guess. Give me a second, I’ll let you in.”

The crimson carpet stood out against the blue walls of the interior, which were decorated with portraits of each member in Theology. On the far left sat a tall black counter, and the rest of the room was will with people on the benches and tables scattered around, illuminated by the sunlight that filtered through the swirly white curtains hung on the opposite wall. Katherine sat behind the counter, looking the exact same as they saw her, save for the purple uniform she now donned.

“You said _ guys of this world, _” Nic greeted her without preamble. “You too?”

“Wait, you guys aren’t from here?” Katherine squinted. “Hydrochloric acid.”

In one synchronised motion, everyone held up their hands to form an okay sign, then responded, “Yeet.”

Katherine suddenly let out a heavy sigh and slumped against the counter. “Oh, thank whatever. I thought I was the only one here and almost went crazy.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Han moved around the counter to give her a comforting pat on the back. “We’re still trying to figure out some stuff.”

“Let’s go into the meeting room first.” At the look of confusion from everyone, Katherine explained, “We’re all co-leaders for this guild, apparently. In this hall—” she pointed to a long hallway to her left “—you go down and turn left, then go upstairs. The top floor is our floor; no one else can enter it. The doors are locked and will only open from the magic infused into our dragon emblems. We have a meeting room and some others I haven’t checked out yet.”

Nic tilted his head. “How do you seem to know almost everything already?”

“Well, I had a day to run around screaming while trying to figure things out.”

“And in that hallway…?” Sally asked, staring at the long blue corridor.

“Oh.” Katherine glanced at the blue walls lined with fancy silver candles and other ornaments. “It’s dorms for other people in the guild. We’re rich, apparently, so this is no big deal.”

Tiffany and Cecilia cheered, and the two muttered something about a sandbox as Katherine spoke over them. “We have dorms too. On the top floor, obviously. There’s a training area right behind this building, but I’ll get to that later.”

“Katherine’s being a total MVP,” Tiffany said. “The helper-guide-person in the tutorial of a game for us noobs.”

“Yes, _ we stan _,” Janice added, applauding.

Nothing was more fascinating than the elevator-like compartment installed inside their medieval-esque guild headquarters, which they allegedly owned. The meeting room was more boring than they thought: a large room with a round table, chairs, and a board on one side. No bright colours, no other decorations, no clock either. Their only companion was the sunlight that managed to escape past the boring, white, blinds.

“I have a feeling we don’t use this room as much.” Han paused. “Our _ other _ selves, I mean.”

“Maybe they plan while going to wherever they need to instead of wasting time here. Should I start with what I know?” Katherine received several nods, to which she continued with, “Our clan is called Dracheheim—and I don’t know what that means or why we picked that name—which rules over this area. Country, region, whatever. We get requests from the townspeople and others nearby, send out guild members depending on the difficulty of the mission, and get the rewards. As I said earlier: we all co-lead the guild; there isn’t a single guild master, but eight. We only go on missions if it’s dangerous and need to go as a team.”

Cecilia waved her hand before asking, “Do you know what we were doing in a forest?”

“Apparently, you two—“ Katherine gestured to Cecilia and Tiffany “—accidentally lost your weapons, so y’all were in the middle of searching for clues after someone reported they spotted them. That’s when we got swapped, I think.” 

“Does that mean we lost our abilities and stuff, then?” Tiffany asked, glancing down at the stick in her hand with a wince. “That’s _ sad _.”

“Almost; losing your weapon only means losing access to some skills, so you two really can’t do complicated spells for now. By the way, you can check the party system by opening your menu. Just think about opening a screen and the stuff will pop up.”

Everyone did as she instructed, and sure enough, a menu with several buttons for actions appeared in their vision. It didn’t seem like they could see each other’s menus.

“We’re all in each other’s friends list and guild list already, so just choose their name and you’ll get to communicate with them telepathically. There’s a party chat where everyone can hear each other at once, apparently, so be careful with that. You can choose to turn it on or off anytime.”

“I think we should pick up where our other selves left off,” Dat suggested. “It says Tiff and Cece are healers, which we need more than DPS if we’re to counter stronger enemies, so we’ll go find their weapons first.” He sent a party invite to everyone, and after glancing at their stats once they joined, he nodded approvingly.

“You fools,” Janice boomed as she towered over the healers, “how did you even lose your sticks.”

Cecilia shrugged indifferently, while Tiffany replied, “I dunno, ask the other me.”

“Natural selection is coming for your other selves,” Janice continued to bellow.

“I found the skill tree,” Nic said, pointing at a spot in the air which the group assumed was his own skill tree.

Han tilted her head. “Skill tree?”

“It’s a list of your skills and branches out like a tree,” Nic explained. “If you think show skills, it appears.”

“Wait, Katherine, what’s your role?” Cecilia’s eyes fell on the reception-lady-like clothing Katherine wore, dyed a deep purple with silver clasps and a black skirt that went past her knees. “You’re not in our party.”

“I’m the manager here or something. I don’t have any fighting capabilities, but I do manage your missions, oversee everything else, and send backup and stuff if you guys need help.” Katherine heaved a sigh. “It gets really boring.”

Han's head bobbed in interest as Katherine listed the rest of her duties, which seemed to get longer and more complicated the more she talked. “That sounds like a lot of work.”

_ “Yes, it is!” _ Katherine shook her head and sighed again. “Apparently, the townspeople are worried I’ll die of stress because there’s never a peaceful day here.”

“Well now there will,” Tiffany pointed out. “We’re gonna be leaving to find our weapons because I _ refuse _ to fight with this… stick.”

“The missions board is right there.” Katherine pulled up a holographic map from thin air and pointed to the image of a large bulletin board on the opposite wall of the counter, covered from border to border with papers and a mess of red ink. “They’re ordered from easiest to hardest going left, and the due dates aren’t too soon since they understand we don’t have that many guild members here.”

“Now that your role as the tutorial lady is over, what do you plan to do?” Sally asked Katherine. “Do you think you can join us?”

Katherine shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll just tag along, I guess.” She was about to send a request to join the party when Dat stopped her.

“I think it’s best if she monitored us from headquarters,” Dat said. “We don’t know our skills well enough to protect you, so it’s best if we wait until we find Cece and Tiff’s weapons. That way, they can at least keep everyone alive.”

Another sigh. “All right. Well, good luck on your search.”

“Thanks, Katherine.” Janice gave a warm smile as the party filed out of the door. “We’ll see you soon.”

Katherine pulled over Sally to hand her something, but it was hidden as quickly as it was given, and no one questioned it when Sally rejoined the group, assuming it was for her skills or something of the sort.

They all left with a wave and trotted their way to the board, blocking the other guild members’ views as they stood in front of the board almost like a large wall. The board was split into five sections, ranking each group of missions with D, C, B, A, and S. Some were images of monsters with a note to exterminate them below, while others were request letters, and some occasional missing people posters were mixed in.

“We should choose a simple one for now,” Dat said, “just for figuring out how to use our skills, determining our capabilities, and whatnot.”

Nic pulled one of the papers off the board, and everyone crowded around him to read the contents. “To Dracheheim, there has been a group of hostile monsters appearing around our village. Please help get rid of them. Sincerely, the Village of Ruta,” Cecilia read aloud. “Marked D rank. That looks simple enough.”

“I think we should add in a few more missions since this is too many people for such an easy task.” Han waved her hand vaguely. “I don’t think we’ll be returning here often—we still need to find a way back to our world.”

“A chain of missions, then, and make them further apart from each other so we can search more and stay out longer.” Sally pulled off several more papers and showed them to the group. “Which of these look doable?”

After spending about ten minutes debating over which two to choose from the pile, they finally chose two more D rank missions: one investigation mission and one elimination mission. Sally took the papers and went back to Katherine’s counter, where she had returned to and had just finished speaking with another guild member.

“According to some healers I talked to, Cece and Tiff should have a communication spell to connect us,” she said, “but I’m not sure about now, since their weapons are gone and everything.”

“I don’t. It says it’s locked.”

“Same.”

With an almost constipated look, Katherine turned around, and the rustling of papers reached their ears as she took handed over a few scrolls and took the mission papers. “These are communication scrolls infused with my magic energy. Someone add in theirs and we’ll be able to talk for about an hour.”

“As always, your help is appreciated.” Han grinned, and for a moment everyone thought they were seeing the sun from how bright her energy was.

Katherine grabbed a stamp from behind the counter and dipped it into a box of black ink. “Yeah, one second. I’ll check you guys out and mark these as taken.” She let the excess ink drip back into the box, then carefully pressed on the corner of each paper, leaving behind a weird symbol.

“We’ll bring back souvenirs,” Janice chirped, “so don’t worry so much.”

“Yes, and I’ll be so _ bored _.” 

Laughing, the party departed shortly after that, loaded with a decent amount of gold, horses for travel, and other needs in a small bag carried on their backs or slung over a shoulder. “Our first missions will be the monsters one. It’s in the village right next to us,” Dat informed, following everyone in mounting their horses with smoothness they shouldn’t possess.

“Muscle memory from our other selves?” Nic questioned from atop his own horse.

It was unsure who spoke over the loud trotting from the horses, but someone replied, “Most likely.”

They exchanged glances with each other, and after receiving a nod from everyone, pushed their horses to gallop down the dirt path.

——— 

“So this is the village of Ruta.” Cecilia stared at the large wooden gates in awe, marveling at the calmness of the place compared to the busty streets of Huhclah. “I can kinda see why monsters are picking them as targets to attack now.”

“The second mission is also here, right?” Tiffany added. “The one about investigating the forest where people were getting attacked by mysterious creatures.”

“It’s believed the same type of monsters are responsible, but the effects and wounds left behind say otherwise,” Sally explained. She was the first to enter through the rusty metal gates and took a step back at the dog that came barreling past her, tail wagging excitedly as it barked at the newcomers.

“They have dogs here too!!” Han’s eyes lit up as she jumped around the dog, attempting to pet it. “Puppy!”

“Ooooo!!” Tiffany and Cecilia joined her in playing with the random dog as if they had never seen such an animal in their life. The rest of the group moved forward to meet with an elderly man who they assumed was the village chief. Both groups exchanged their greetings and smiled politely at each other.

“I apologise for arriving so late,” Janice said, gesturing to the darkening sky above them. She followed with showing her dragon emblem to confirm their identities. “We’re from Dracheheim. Would you mind giving us details of the attacks and monsters?”

“Of course. You can all stay at the inn down the street for as long as you want. We’re truly grateful you’re willing to travel to a small village like ours for such an insignificant task.”

Janice put on her professional smile. “Nonsense, we help everyone whenever we can, no matter how small the problem.”

“Thank you, honoured members of Dracheheim.” The village chief bowed. “My name is Willy.”

Willy led them past the quiet streets, where they greeted passersby with friendly smiles and waves. Eventually, they stopped before a large building that looked almost like a shack, decorated with fancy ornaments and other flowy, cloth-like objects the party had a hard time finding a name for. Inside was fairly empty save for the large table and few chairs scattered around.

“I hope you don’t mind the state of my house,” Willy said. “We were attacked just a day ago and had to remove most of our destroyed furniture to replace them.”

“It’s no problem,” Dat said.

Willy sighed, then sat down in a chair, gesturing for them to follow. “Our farmers first noticed a large portion of their crops were missing, and the attacks began after they started to build fences around, thinking it was a thief. The attacks were initially occasional, but they occur almost daily now.”

“Can you describe what these monsters look like?” Sally held out a device that seemed oddly reminiscent of a tablet. “Katherine gave this to me shortly before we left,” she told the party. “It has an encyclopedia of monsters and things we might not recognise.”

Willy nodded sagely. “They’re short, up to an average man’s chest, and they look like trees. Their hands are large and they usually throw rocks at us if we try to defend.”

Sally tapped in the description like she would on a smartphone, and an image resembling what the village chief described popped up. “It says it’s a... jalrak? I’m not sure how to say it. They’re weak to fire attacks but neutral against everything else.”

“I guess we can start now. We’ll investigate the forest tomorrow after taking care of those jalrak things—whatever they’re called. Does that sound all right to everyone?” Dat looked around, eyeing the three that were still playing around with the puppy in the distance. With a sigh, he turned back to the tablet. “Someone call them over.”

“Sure.” Janice nodded, answering both questions, and then beckoned over the three. “Y’all, we’re gonna beat up some monsters today!”

“With your sad CD and our sticks?” Tiffany asked as she neared, Han and Cecilia at her heels, dog nowhere to be seen. “Wait, at least you have magic on your side.”

“If she didn’t have magic, she’d be snapped in half like the stick she is,” Cecilia said. In response to Janice’s indignant screech, she snickered.

“Y’all are gonna be folded like lawn chairs.” Dat glanced at Nic, Han, and Sally, and after a pause, gestured to the Sad Weapons Trio. “Actually, just you three.”

In unison, said trio yelled, “Huh—?!”

Nic fiddled with his arrows, seemingly inspecting them and reading his skills as his eyes scanned over invisible words in the air. “I wonder if this is a real language, he muttered, absentmindedly tracing over the symbols engraved on his arrows.

“I mean, it technically is, since it’s being used by real people… I think,” Tiffany said. “So what are we killing again?”

“Jalraks—according to the bestiary Katherine gave Sally—” Dat pointed to the slab of technology in her hands, “—they’re weak against fire. We have one sorcerer, and I’m assuming she’s the only one here that does magic—”

“We do too!” Cecilia retorted, waving an arm wildly.

“—_ and _ does a decent amount of damage.” An unamused look, then a sigh. “With your lack of weapons and positions as healers, I doubt you’d do any DPS.”

“He’s not wrong.” Tiffany patted Cecilia twice on the back in what they assumed was supposed to be a comforting motion. “Hey, at least we’re what keeps the party alive.”

Han squinted at her skill tree, then looked back at Sally before asking Dat, “Was my blade summoning thing and Sally’s chain extension not magic?”

“Pure magic is more like Janice’s fireball instead of attacking with magic elements. It’s like directly tossing a ball of fire while you stick your swords into a fire for a while before fighting. Everyone has magic—they just can't all use it to its full potential.”

“Ohhh.” Han’s head snapped up in understanding. “So that’s what it was.”

“We should head out around now if we want to rest for a while and do the other mission tomorrow.” Sally held up the tablet-like device and passed it around for everyone to see. It was heavier than they expected, almost twice the weight of a regular smartphone. “Here’s what they look like.”

Tiffany’s face scrunched up. “Full offense, those things look ugly.” 

“Like you,” said Dat.

“No you.”

Janice turned to Cecilia and jabbed a thumb at Tiffany, who had begun a “no u” match with Dat. “You two try to kill as many as you can. We’ll just kill whatever you can’t kill.”

“Okay.”

Willy took this moment as a chance to finally say something. “Once again, I thank you for your help.” The village chief bowed repeatedly as he spoke, adding, “The inn will provide bedding and food for free.”`

“Oh, no, no need.” Han waved her hand dismissively, a slight look of surprise crossing her features. “We can’t impose on you like this. Let us pay.”

“But—”

“We’ll be off, then!” Without another word, Janice quickly ushered the party out of the building and headed straight towards the inn to book a place for the night. 

The innkeeper was a nice lady with long, curly brown hair, lips upturned into a slight smile, and standing upright at the doorway, overseeing the customers eating at the dining tables set around the reception counter. She turned her to the party in one graceful motion as the door opened. “Welcome to the Ruta Inn,” she greeted, voice soft like a bell. “Would you like to book a few rooms?”

“Yes, please. We’d like three rooms for one night.” Janice hid her emblem and motioned for the rest to do the same. “How much would that be?”

“It’s 100 gold for a night, 500 for one week, and 1,000 for two weeks, Extended stays will be calculated with a combination of the three.” The lady held out a hand and led them to the reception counter. “We offer three meals a day for an additional 50 gold.”

“That’s a good idea.” Dat rummaged through his pockets for a while before pulling out a pouch of gold coins. He paid her a total of 150 gold, and almost immediately after, his menu system automatically opened to flash bright blue words: _ [Dat] has booked for room 103 of Ruta Inn. _Curious he turned to ask the others, “Did anyone get a notif?”

“I’m in room 102,” Tiffany replied. “Who’s my roomie?”

Han raised her hand. “Yay, roomies!”

Glancing questioningly at the floating, Janice squinted. “Who’s in room 104?” she asked, looking around. 

“I am.” From the back, Sally stepped forward, moving to stand next to Janice. “I might sleep late, just a warning.”

“Oh, sad.” Cecilia stretched out an arm to pat Tiffany on her shoulder. “No sandbox buddy this time. I’m with Janice and Salt.”

Tiffany sighed as if a great tragedy had happened. “Unfortunate.”

“So this means I’m rooming with Nic,” Dat said. He turned back to face the lady. “Can you direct us to our rooms?”

The lady smiled. “Of course. This way, please.” She headed into a hallway and walked through the long corridors before stopping in front of a simple door at the end. A silver plaque with the number _ 102 _ was engraved in the center, reflecting off the dims lights from the candelabras hanging on the pale orange walls. “Rooms 102, 103, and 104. Please enjoy your stay. If you need anything, feel free to ask me or any of our staff.”

“Staff?” Cecilia parroted.

“They will be wearing the same clothes as me. Do you have any questions?”

“No, thank you. If we do have any later, we’ll be sure to ask,” Janice said, lips curling up for a good impression.

“Dinner will be served soon. I’ll send some people to call you when the time comes.” The lady left before they could even ask about the fees, leaving a group of confused otherworldly teenagers standing in the hallway.

“Since we don’t have much, why don’t we drop off our stuff and meet in one room to discuss our next plans?” Dat said, opening the door to his room. Nic nodded and silently followed him, setting down his quiver, arrows, and bow down on the table provided and took off his gloves. Dat placed his powerfists beside Nic’s weapons ensemble.

“Woah, there’s a window too,” Han commented as she and Tiffany entered their room. Much like Dat and Nic’s room, two beds were placed against one wall on opposite corners, with a table in between, allowing enough room for a person to sit sideways on the bed and use the table like a desk. A wooden chair stood not far from the table. Light filtered through the window on the far left wall, below the base of the bed.

The only difference in Cecilia, Janice, and Sally’s room was that there were three beds instead of two: a bunk bed and a regular bed. The room also happened to be larger too, most likely for accommodating three people and their belongings rather than one or two. Janice looked around in wonder. “Wow, this room is big.”

There was enough space to do two somersaults. Sally was quick to invite everyone else into the room, and they all settled on the beds, the chair, or the table. “Someone call Katherine so we can update her about the situation.”

“I have no idea how to infuse magic energy or whatever she said,” Dat said with a shrug.

“Me neither.”

“Well I can’t.”

With no knowledge of magic, no one was able to use the scroll properly. They all stared at the rolled-up paper until Nic eventually reached for it, testing its weight on his hands. “Hmm.” He stared at it a bit more, and with Katherine’s earlier instructions repeating in his head, envisioned his magical energy as something flowing through his fingers and manipulated it to come out and enter the scroll.

The scroll glowed for two seconds, shook for five, and then stopped.

“Did it fail?” Tiffany inquired. She was about to take the scroll to inspect it as Niv handed it to her when a flash appeared over the paper.

_ Error, call not received. The other party may be busy—please try again later. _

“.........”

“This has weird missed phone call energy,” Han said.

Everyone nodded in agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my brain fried this week ignore the typos pls


	2. Chapter Two - Yo, What Was That??

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Rather Long Prologue pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y e e t

The team had arrived at the village outskirts late in the evening, right as the sun threatened to fall below the horizon. They had discussed ways to solve the jalraks problem before settling on outright eliminating the threats. According to the bestiary, jalraks were unintelligent creatures that lived in groups. They’d be permanently gone when eliminated unless another group decided to settle down. Han was squinting into the distance when she spotted a blur of green hidden behind the wide, flat land of brown dirt and several crops. “Is it just me, or does it look like something’s approaching?”

Dat tried to follow her line of sight to see where she was looking. When he saw nothing, he turned back to her. “Where?”

“Over there.” Han pointed a finger towards the green blurs—which seemed to be growing larger as she stared at it more—moving past the barns and houses positioned at the far side of the fields. “By the large barn next to the carrot field.”

“Wait.” Closing his eyes, Nic swiped one hand over his face, then blinked them open to reveal the green glow they gave off. “Those are jalraks,” he confirmed, nodding. “They really do look like trees.”

“Is it a skill for sniping?” Dat asked him. The green blurs were large enough for him to see at this point, but the image was still fuzzy, and he gave up after squinting for a few more seconds. 

Nic gave another nod. “I can see up to 150 metres away,” he said, gaining a hum of approval from the rest of the group.

“Does anyone else have a skill like this?” Dat inquired as he turned his attention to the DPS team. “It’s understandable that Nic has it since he’s an archer, but I’m wondering if Janice, Han, or Sally has it too.”

“I just have skills that deals damage on a bunch of stuff. I don’t see a sniping skill anywhere.” Janice replied, looking over her skill tree. “They’re mostly like _ summon a blizzard damaging targets in a 10 metre radius _ or _ create a large fireball to shoot through targets within a line of 21 metres. _”

Tiffany suddenly let out a tired sigh. “...I’m gonna have heart attacks with a glass cannon in our group.” She turned to Janice and added, “Please don’t be a glass cannon. I will _ cry. _”

With great confusion, Janice raised an eyebrow. “A what?”

Dat shook his head. “It’s nothing important; we’ll find out later.”

“Wait, I haven’t checked everyone’s stats profile yet.” Tiffany paused. At some point, she learned to move everyone’s stats boxes in a semicircle at the bottom of her vision, displaying their names, classes, HP and MP bars, and status effects like buffs, debuffs, effects from potions, etc. “How do I pull that up?”

“We’ll figure that out later too.” Dat detached his powerfirsts from the holders strapped behind his back and equipped his left one. “How far are those jalraks?”

Sally already had her scythes out and was positioned in a stance ready to fight when she replied, “They’re approaching.”

The party’s attention fell on the jalraks rushing at them from not far away, stumbling clumsily over each other and destroying the measly fences that tried to block their way without difficulty. They seemed angry, hostile intent obvious as they gathered rocks in their hands to throw at the party. Everyone immediately spread out to cover more ground, but Dat was quick to stop them.

“I’ll grab their attention and keep them away from the crops. Everyone else, focus on attacking while I’m keeping them occupied.” He nodded at Tiffany, who gave him an okay sign, before opening his mouth to silently roar at the sky. A thin ring of wind emanated from his body and grew outwards, rushing past the jalraks and directing their focus to him.

“Attack how?” Han stared confusedly at the mob piling over Dat, her twin swords equipped but not moving. “Do I just… stab?”

“There should be instructions in your skill tree,” Nic supplied helpfully as he drew back an arrow and released it. “It also tells you what combination you should use and how to use them.”

Han went still for a few seconds as she skimmed through her skill tree before lifting her swords again. “Ohhh. I get it. Thanks.”

The party dispersed into four groups as they began to fight.They figured it would be easier once they knew how to use their skills, reading and learning as they fought, but instead they were left struggling even more as everyone tried to figure out how to sort through their seemingly countless skills. They all had no idea where to start or end. Dat stood in the center, powerfists glowing red-orange as he kicked the jalraks into the air and punched them back into the ground. He seemed to have adapted rather quickly.

Han fought the group of jalraks from the opposite side, swords glowing as well with the flurry of slashes that left behind a fiery trail, burning nearby enemies when the flame spread. When it became apparent that those attacks dealt more damage to the jalraks, she switched to using skills that gave off the same effects. Her initially stiff swings gradually became smoother and more natural as her body became accustomed to the fast-paced motions of fighting.

To her side, Sally was constantly jumping back and forth like some kangaroo, dark chains coated in a red hue whipping around and extending her range of attack as the scythes slashed heads off. Briefly, she wondered how her legs and back weren’t acting up as if she had arthritis, but considering this body’s class and the environment, it was understandable her other self would be more physically healthy. She heard clapping from somewhere as she did a flip, wrapped a chain around a jalrak’s neck, and tugged with force to send it crashing against another group of jalraks.

Not too far away from the melee duo were Janice and Nic, with the latter doing as well as Dat. “These things are weak to fire, right?” Janice asked, and when Nic gave her a nod, she followed the instructions on her skill tree and moved her right arm in a counterclockwise motion. Small hints of fire trailed behind her fingertips as she drew a circle, the disc glowing as it floated in the centre. Seconds later, a rain of fireballs fell on a patch of ground and incinerated the group of jalraks there.

“Nice,” Nic commented, drawing back another arrow on the bow string.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing!” In hopes of contributing, Janice continued to randomly toss attacks that had the word fire in its description on the skill tree, which, while ineffective in theory, was actually a big help in cutting down the amount of enemies. Nic shot arrows at the remaining jalraks that managed to dodge her attacks.

“Well, they seem to be doing fine.” Not far from the chaos, Tiffany stood beside Cecilia. They stared ahead in awkward silence as the red bars of the party members’ HP refused to move in their visions. “It’s like they don’t even need healers.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Cecilia asked. “It means they’re capable of handling themselves, right?”

“But this is so _boring._” Sighing, Tiffany dropped down into a crouch, mindful of the dirt that might stain her cloak. “I have attack skills and buff-debuff skills and can summon little minions to help me but I can’t, because they’re _locked. _All because of this—” she waved her current weapon in a blatant mix of frustration and disappointment, “—this _stick_.”

Cecilia opened up her skill tree and stared at the list of branching skills, which were all healing spells. Other than her basic attack and an explosion skill that both healed the party and did damage—the cooldown was slightly long, though, at five minutes—she had nothing interesting. “We’ll find our weapons soon,” she tried to comfort. “After—”

A screech resembling a warbling duck interrupted their conversation, and the healers snapped their heads in Janice’s direction, only to see her running away in distress, a group of jalraks angrily at her heels. “Heeelp!!” she screeched again. _ “Help me!!” _

“Just toss a fireball at them!” Cecilia yelled back, obviously amused and doing nothing whatsoever to help her. “Aren’t they easy to kill?!”

Janice glared at her, two seconds away from marching towards the mystic to beat her up. “But this is too many!”

Tiffany tried to smother her giggles with her hand before giving up halfway and releasing a loud cackle. She laughed with Cecilia until a jalrak managed to poke Janice on the arm, and her eyes widened in shock as the HP bar below the Janice’s name depleted by 60 percent. “...Holy sandbox,” she whispered, and Cecilia froze as well, stiffly turning her head.

They were frozen even as Janice took another poke, to which she collapsed and twitched once, before falling limply to the ground, disc rolling tragically over the dirt after her. Her stats, which were originally a colorful display of red and blue, turned grey in an instant, and the word _ DEAD _stamped over her entire box. “I died!” Janice’s voice screeched, a great contrast to her unmoving body. “I can’t move! What?! What’s going on??!”

Seeing that the sorceress had officially died, the jalraks chasing her glanced at each other for a few seconds and moved back to join their kin in fighting the other Theology members. The healers took this as a chance to rush to Janice. Still shaken from the death animation, Cecilia hovered over Janice’s ‘corpse’ with uncertainty. “Uh… you died. So you can’t move.”

“Well duh—”

“Hold on, I got you.” Tiffany waved her stick over Janice’s head, and dots forming a circle began to slowly appear around the ‘corpse’. “This is gonna take a while.”

Janice’s body rose as light emerged in wisps from the dots on the circle, circling around her like little fairies. She soon stood back up again, health and mana back at full as the disc floated back to its original position beside her. “You fool,” Tiffany cackled, clapping her hands like a seal. “I can’t believe you died so easily.”

“How did you do that?” Janice asked, obviously dodging the topic. “Is it a skill?”

“Revive—it’s like the second skill in my skill tree.” Tiffany turned to Cecilia. “I think you have it too. I can only revive one person, and it temporarily reduces their aggro for about 20 seconds.”

“Mine is locked,” Cecilia replied. “It can revive up to six people at once, but according to the tree I need my weapon to unlock it.

“Well that’s a fat RIP in the chat.” Tiffany squinted at something over Janice’s shoulder, then glanced at what seemed to be someone’s stats box in her vision. “By the way, good luck.” She was sprinting in the other direction moments later, pulling Cecilia with her.

“Huh?” Hearing a low growl from behind her, Janice turned around to see the black, soulless eyes of a jalrak staring back. More were approaching from the distance.

She screamed.

_ “Help!” _She tossed a fireball over her shoulder and ran for her life—which was quite impressive with the shoes she had on—going in large circles around the group. “Someone help me!!”

Unfortunately, Dat was too busy pulling all the jalraks to him, so he couldn’t leave his position without risking the destruction of the crops. Han and Sally were watching each other’s backs, and Nic had his own group to deal with after Janice’s jalraks flocked to him when she died. There was pity in the healers’ eyes as they tossed whatever healing spells they could think of at Janice, trying to keep her alive with the miniscule healing they were doing.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Cecilia said, echoing Janice’s earlier words as she cast spells as soon as they were off cooldown. “I’m literally just spamming whatever skills I see.”

“Well, you’re doing fine so far.” Tiffany pointed to the other side of the group. “You know what, I’ll just put you on Janice duty. Stay on that side and try to keep her alive.”

“What about the others?”

“I’m sure they’ll do fine on their own. If not, I’ll take care of it.”

Their weapons took this moment as a cue to begin glowing. Cecilia shielded her face from the bright light, but Tiffany squinted at it like she would to the sun, and her mouth dropped as the long stick and twig morphed and evolved into a long and short pole respectively. They did not look as great as the rest of the party’s weapons, but it was a much better upgrade compared to the originals.

“Cece, look!” Tiffany exclaimed, pointing to the skill tree that only she could see. “I have some skills unlocked now!”

“Huh?” Opening her skill tree, Cecilia found out that some of her skills were indeed unlock—specifically skills labeled _ buff _ and _ debuff _. “You’re right.”

“You know what they are, right?”

“No…?”

“Okay—” Tossing a spell at a nearby jalrak, whom Han was fighting with, Tiffany pointed at the curse marks that appeared and wrapped around it like Sally’s chains. “Debuffs basically make them weaker so it’s easier for the party to attack. And then buffs—” she tossed another spell, this time at Han, and a small arrow pointing up appeared below her stats box, indicating that her attack had been temporarily increased, “—increase the stats and abilities of our own party. Just toss them whenever.”

“Okay...?” Still confused, Cecilia casted buffs with her onslaught on healing spells, but she soon became so busy focusing on buffing the rest of the party and debuffing jalraks that she forgot about keeping Janice alive.

“Cece!” Janice screeched, ducking as a jalrak clawed at her. Her HP fell to the 30% zone and blinked warningly. “Heal me, child!!”

“Oh, right!” In a hurry, Cecilia waved her stick and casted several healing spells, sighing when Janice’s HP bar went back to full again. She turned back to the jalraks only to see that their debuffs had long worn off.

“Uh…” Tiffany trailed off speechlessly.

“I can’t multitask!” Cecilia cried indignantly, feeling the need to defend herself. “I’ve never even done this stuff before!”

“I can… do everything else?” Tiffany said unsurely. “I mean, Janice needs to learn to dodge too. Like Nic. Look.” She pointed in the general direction where Nic was fighting, which was not very helpful when they found him running backwards aimlessly while shooting arrows at the mob chasing him, all the while on the other side of where he started. When a jalrak moved to close, he sidestepped the attacks and jumped back, shooting another arrow at it.

Janice’s jaw dropped at the lack of damage he was taking. “Huh??? I’m. Noob.”

“If you learn how to dodge, we don't need to heal you as much,” Tiffany said. “You don’t even need to stand still to cast spells anyway.” 

“Wha—” Spluttering, Janice glanced at the others to see how they were doing, only to let out more incoherent noises upon seeing them all in the same position as Nic; Han and Sally were expertly moving through the mess of enemies, dodging with series of backflips, sidesteps, and parries. Dat was immune to damage as he shielded himself while fighting.

“Cece on Janice duty it is!” Dat yelled over the sounds of fighting, despite not giving any indication he could even hear them beforehand. “At least until Janice learns to dodge!”

It took them a while, but the amount of jalraks in each wave decreased until they had completely eliminated all in the area. The corpses of slain jalraks disintegrated into the air with the blood, leaving behind small scrolls, handfuls of gold, and other unrecognisable items. Sally made a note to search them up in the tablet hanging safely by her hip later.

“Free gold!!” Tiffany whispered excitedly to Han. She was ignored by the others as she ran around to collect the gold like a beggar. 

“These controls and stuff are pretty similar to the games I play.” Day huffed, setting down his powerfists. “I’d expect Nic and even Tiff to understand too, but Tiff is too noob to be decent.”

“Hey!”

“You two did good.” Ignoring Tiffany, Dat turned to Han and Sally, who were relatively unscathed. “Did you have any practise or is this a first time thing?”

“Playing sports helped with my reflexes,” Han replied, sheathing her swords. “Everything else I figured out on my own.

Sally hooked her scythes onto the clasps on her back. “I figured them out too.”

Dat nodded in approval, then turned back to Tiffany. “Teach Cece some basic healer techniques. Everyone seems to have gotten used to their roles and attacks, so we’ll focus on formation and more advanced stuff next time.” He looked at the DPS group and gestured to Janice. “You guys should teach Janice the dodging skill when you have time.”

Cecilia trudged over to the destroyed crops that had been run over by stray jalraks. “What are we gonna do with the crops?” she asked, staring sadly at the ruined vegetation. “This is such a waste.”

Only two fields had been completely turned over by jalraks. The rocks they threw were scattered throughout the previously neat rows of green, and some were even embedded into the dirt. Compared to the other 18 fields that had their crops untouched, the amount destroyed was small, but it still could’ve fed a small family for at most a full week. The party silently sent their apologies to the farmers that would come back to this later.

“Do we have enough to compensate them?” Janice asked. “We should be pretty rich, right?”

“Yeah, we do,” Dat replied. “I can speak with the village chief later or tomorrow about it.”

“Let’s return to the inn and rest for the day,” Han suggested as she glanced up at the sky. Purple and orange hues were already blending in with the usual blue, and the sun was nearly hidden under the horizon. “It’s getting really dark.”

“Yeah, we should go back.” Janice pulled Tiffany back from the collecting spree. “Tiff, get over here.”

“I can’t believe you’re still hoarding even when we’re rich and in another world,” Dat said, eyeing the gold that was threatening to spill out of the small pouch in an almost pitiful manner. “Noob.”

When Tiffany turned to Cecilia for help, she was betrayed by the judging silence from the other healer.

They collected the rest of the scrolls and replaced the fences that managed to get caught in the fight, making sure to pay back the farmers for destroying part of their farm. Under Dat’s command, they went back the next day to help replant new crops, build the fences, and help with any other work as further compensation.

———

It was weird to be awoken by roosters first thing in the morning rather than an alarm clock, video game noises, or shrill screaming from someone, but the foreign clothes and unfamiliar buildings served as a constant reminder that they needed to find a way to return to their world. All seven gathered around the table at breakfast and prepared to call Katherine. The scroll was opened halfway, leaving enough room for a hologram of their manager-like friend to appear in the air.

“Once either Cece or Tiff learn the long-distance communication skill, we should be able to talk without buying and using scrolls,” she said without preamble as her image appeared. “Someone in the guild told me yesterday. Only healers can use this—I have no idea why.” 

Tiffany squinted. “I don’t have it… Maybe it’s cus I’m a summoner. Was the person that told you this a mystic like Cece?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that’s what it was.” Cecilia stared blankly at something invisible on the table, which everyone assumed was her skill tree.

“What?”

“It just says _ Divine Call _ and nothing else. No description or instructions.” Cecilia shrugged. “How do I use it?”

“Just imagine you’re pulling up an image of me and I’ll appear.” Without another word, Katherine closed the scroll with an abrupt, “Let’s see if this works.”

Cecilia took four tries to actually call up a proper image. It had the same effect as the communication scroll they used minutes ago, only the audio sounded much clearer and there was no longer a static-like effect on the hologram. Katherine beamed at her from the other side, smile wide as she chirped, “Perfect! Now we can just call each other like this if anything happens.”

“How will I know if you’re trying to contact me?”

Katherine waved her hand. “You’ll feel it. It’ll feel like something’s poking at your brain. Just reach back and imagine me.”

“Have you found anything about our situation yet?” Dat asked from the back of the group. He swept aside the remains of their breakfast—scattered plates, napkins, and utensils—and pulled out the mission papers, holding the one they completed for Katherine to see. “We completed this one yesterday, by the way.”

“I’ll catalogue it in our guild archives.” Katherine gave a nod, eyes flitting from the paper to the party. “I’m still working on finding a way back. Dimension travel doesn’t seem to be possible here, even though there’s magic.”

“We planned on taking as many missions in different places as possible to search for clues and cover more ground. Hopefully we’ll find Cece and Tiff’s weapons on our way, since there’s no telling when we’ll need healers,” Janice said, hands waving absentmindedly in the air. “There was a bit of planning last night, but nothing too specific.”

“Oh, right, I found out my class,” Katherine said. Before anyone could say more, she continued, “I was reading about classes in the guild library. There’s a book about us, for reasons I don’t know why, in the private section, and it’s only I can access it with my magic. It has all our abilities, traits, and descriptions of our classes.”

“I thought you didn’t have one?” Han asked. “There’s no icon next to your name.”

“Or a weapon,” Nic added. “Classes are identifiable by their weapons.”

“I’m an archiver, apparently. I store all information, manage information, and access data from any source as long as I’ve seen, read, or heard about it once.” Eyes glinting dangerously, Katherine’s lips curled. “There’s blackmail material too.”

The room suddenly felt chilly.

“But—” Katherine’s face reverted back to her usual smile, “—it’s not important right now. What’s important is that I can search through documents to find anything, including the guild library. As long as you get a lead, I can search through my database and find more clues.”

“That’s… that’s so convenient.” Janice stared at her disc. “And I get this.”

“It’s okay, Janice,” Cecilia comforted, patting her shoulder. “At least you have a weapon.”

Dat motioned for them to quiet down and listen. “We’ll move on to the second mission and see if we can find anything there,” he said, holding up the mission paper for Katherine to see. “Is that okay?”

“That’s fine with me—but I expect a report at least once a day,” Katherine replied. “Even the smallest things might help. Which one is it?” She moved closer towards her screen, causing her face to grow larger. “I can’t read that.”

“The one about people being attacked by mysterious creatures in the forest. This’ll be a great way for our DPS team—” Dat hand waved at Han, Sally, Janice, and Nic, “—to figure out their skills and skills links.”

“Rotations, right?” 

“You know about rotations?”

“I read most of the stuff in the archives—I know the gist but there’s still some things I don’t know.”

“What are rotations?” Sally asked. “Is it the way our skills are used?”

“Close enough,” Tiffany said. “It’s the order you use it in, depending on cooldowns and other factors, and how well they work combined or used back to back.”

Sally blinked. “Like a chain of attacks?”

“Oh! I found a rotation thing today,” Han said cheerfully. She added as an afterthought, “While we were fighting those jalraks. I learned a chain of skills that works really well.”

“Did anyone even try the team telepathy thing Katherine mentioned?” Cecilia asked. “We were just, like, yelling at each other.”

Tiffany opened her mouth, then closed it like a fish. “Oh. I forgot about that.”

“Same,” Janice said. “I was too busy trying to fight.” No one mentioned how 80 percent of her ‘fighting’ included running away and screeching.

“...”

“...”

“...”

“We can work on that later, too,” Dat sighed. “I don’t think it’ll be that hard.”

“You guys should better get going before the day ends,” Katherine interrupted with a cough. “The sun’s almost up. I’m pretty sure y’all don’t want to burn in the heat while fighting.”

“Yeah, we’re going.” Standing up from her chair, Janice flashed a small smile. “Thanks for all this, Katherine.”

Nic gave a thumbs up, head bobbing approvingly as the party all followed Janice and pushed their chairs in, cleaning up after themselves and tossing away the trash. Han thanked the lady standing at the corner of the inn with a grin, and although everyone had almost left at that point, they could see her arguing with the innkeeper lady about the price, which they added in an extra 20 percent as a tip.

“We have too much money to keep anyway,” Cecilia responded when the pouch of gold was rejected for the fifth time. “And you even tried to give us back our gold last night after we let our guild name slip.”

The squabble ended with Han tossing the pouch at the innkeeper before breaking into a sprint out of the inn, Cecilia at her heels. They met up with the party who were not far from the street across the inn. “We’re good,” Han grinned with an okay sign.

“Which way is the forest again?” Tiffany asked, looking around and trying to squint past the crowds of people and buildings surrounding them. 

Sally pointed to their left. “That direction.”

The forest, unlike the one they woke up in, was more green, with shorter, more spaced out trees, bright slivers of sunlight filtering through the leaves, and an endlessly noisy choir of bird calls, which were immensely pleasant to the ears. Fresh grass crunched under their feet as they walked through the pathless area of green. The occasional bushes blocked their view of the ground, but they were small enough to be unable to hide a threat.

They didn’t stumble across any monsters in the few dozen minutes they walked, but they did find a shallow stream lined with rocks, some few deer-like creatures that ran away on sight, and a singular, large bird, which screeched at the party and flew away, but not before leaving behind a giant pile of poop beside a nearby tree. Everyone held their breaths when they had to walk past that particular tree.

“I can’t believe this place is where people are getting attacked,” Han commented. “It looks friendlier than the one we woke up in.”

“Maybe it’s because the grass and trees looked dead there.”

Janice made a disapproving noise. “Dat, no.”

“No you.”

“Should we split up to search faster?” Sally suggested. “We can communicate with that telepathy skill, right?”

“It sounds like a good time to test it out,” Nic replied.

A unanimous agreement led to them being split up into seven different directions. They searched the edges of the forest (Nic’s vision really helped in seeing past the green and brown), inside the bushes (it was more like Cecilia picking at anything that moved, including bushes that rustled in the wind), and even the treetops (that was mostly Sally, who used her scythes like grappling hooks and climbed her way up), but alas, the search yielded no results.

Cecilia sighed and plopped down tiredly, her back against a tree. “How is it that we’ve looked through the entire forest and still found nothing?”

“Maybe we’re not searching hard enough…?” Tiffany suggested, sitting next to her, though the way she was frowning gave away her uncertainty.

“I don’t see anything past the trees,” Nic’s voice filtered through their heads. They jolted, then calmed down upon realising it was the communication telepathy in effect. “other than people and buildings.”

“Nothing here either,” Sally reported. “I’ve looked through all the trees.”

“Anyone else found anything?” Dat asked.

Han and Janice’s voices somehow replied at the same time, “Nope.”

“Let’s keep searching until evening.” Dat sounded resigned as he heaved a breath. “We’ll meet up later to plan our next move.”

The party eventually gave up at around late into the evening, and they all gathered around a small campfire lit by Janice’s fireball. Everyone sat cross-legged on the grass, weapons lying beside them and glowing softly to provide more light. Sticks speared in with meat were propped up on the ground as they munched on the remains of the deer-creature Nic shot down for them. It roasted nicely over the fire.

“This tastes like chicken,” Tiffany said, to which Janice replied without a beat.

“Mmmmeat.”

Dat huffed and took another bite of the meat. “Everything tastes like chicken to you.”

“Not everyone knows their meats like you, Dat.” Cecilia grabbed another stick before the meat charred. “I want banana.”

Dat’s voice went flat as he stared directly into Cecilia’s eyes. “Go climb a tree then, you monkey fool.” The small fire did not help as the dim light failed to reach his face, making his eyes look like black pits of voids in the darkness of the night.

“No.”

“Bananas are good,” Han defended. “I like the school bananas. Would steal.”

Dat let out an ugly snort. He turned to Janice and gestured to her accusingly. “I can’t believe this. I was gone for a while and Janice already converted someone into a thief like her.” 

“I am _ not _ a thief!” Janice screeched, scaring away the birds that neared them in hopes of gaining food scraps. “I don’t steal!!”

“Yeah, whatever you say, thief.”

“Why you—c’mere, lemme beat you up—”

A growl interrupted Janice, who had already stood up, stalked over to Dat, and had her arms outstretched in a looming motion. Seven heads snapped to the source of the sound.

“Okay, whose stomach was that.”

“Dat, this is no time for jokes.”

“Just kidding, it was mine—”

The rustling of a bush was their only warning before several large beasts, half as tall as Nic, jumped out into the small clearing, effectively surrounding the party. Their sharp, black claws left behind large marks as they took slow steps forward, visible canines poking from their drooling mouths and eyes flashing a deep red. Their bodies were shaped like a lion’s, only they were larger and more aggressive. Sounds of snake hissing filled the silence, and it took a moment for the party to realise it was coming from the snakeheads on the creatures’ tails. 

“Uh… should we make a run for it?” Janice asked, back against the group as they formed a small circle. Each person faced outward, weapons positioned in front of them as they prepared to fight. Cecilia and Tiffany both hid behind someone since they had no way to attack or defend themselves.

“We’re literally surrounded. This is the best time to learn those dodging moves, I guess,” Dat responded with a shrug. “Healers go in the middle. Everyone else stay on the outer circle.”

“These are called manticores,” Sally informed. No one questioned the way she somehow managed to pull out her tablet, type in a description, read the bestiary, and place it back in the span of a few seconds. “They’re not weak to anything.”

“All righty, I’ll just, uh, toss my simple one-damage attack—since my stick is only like level two right now—and hope I can kill them in two thousand hits,” Tiffany said awkwardly. She glanced at the mystic beside her. “...Cece?”

“...”

“Cece, do you need to pee?”

“...Yes.” Cecilia rocked back and forth on her heels, shifting even more awkwardly.

“Good. Pee on them. Kill them with your acidic pee.”

_ “No!” _

Dat ignored the reply as he rushed forward the same time the manticore did, punching sideways and knocking it against another manticore. He continued to throw out attacks until the manticores gathered around him and gave everyone else a chance to attack while they were distracted. Han immediately unsheathed her swords and slashed at them, wincing at their high defense and health. “These guys are tough,” she said to Sally, who stabbed her scythe into the side of a manticore and swung it around to smack it against a tree.

Nic decided to test out something he had been meaning to since their first battle. Right before Janice casted a spell, he drew back and arrow and shot it through her magic circle right as the spell formed, causing the magic to coat his own simple arrow and enhance it with an elemental effect. It increased his regular attack by almost 20 times as it killed a manticore in one hit. So it worked if he infused some of his own magic in the arrow beforehand to keep it from being destroyed. When he tried to do it during their fight with the feral rabbits, Janice’s fireball had incinerated the wood into ashes.

Despite the initial hiccup, Janice eventually learned the dodge motion after several close calls, which was both a blessing and a curse. She now spent more time dodging than actually attempting to attack, screeching all the while, to which the healers found hilarious since she took zero damage while dodging so there was no point in panicking.

“We have a dodge skill too, I think,” Tiffany said, tossing a healing spell over her shoulder. “I have two: a teleport and one that looks like everyone else’s. They’re still locked for me, though.”

Cecilia opened up her skill tree and quickly skimmed through the list. “Oh, same. I guess Janice was just a noob.”

Janice yelled over the sounds of spell casting, “Excuse me, I can hear you!” She was about to say more but cut herself off as another manticore lunged at her from the side, only to receive a fireball to the face. It fell back, screeching like Janice did earlier, except in this case it was in pain. Janice kicked it away with her heels.

“That sounds just like her.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Hey, you! Help me instead of this slander!”

The healers promptly ignored her.

“Everyone’s doing well so far,” Tiffany sighed, casting a healing circle underneath Han with a lazy wave of her hand. “Dat has experience with games, so he’s fine. Han and Janice are doing decent damage—they’re pausing too much at some times. Nic’s almost carrying the ranged group. Sally’s doing fine too. Look—”

Tiffany pointed to the melee group, and both healers turned to said group only to see four things happen in the span of 0.2 seconds:

  1. Claws outstretched, a singular manticore managed to break away from Dat’s distraction and jumped at Sally, ready to maul her to death.
  2. Sally slipped on a wet patch of grass right as she dodged and fell to the ground, dropping her scythes in the process.
  3. The manticore sent her flying towards a tree.
  4. Sally’s health bar went from full to zero before they could even blink, and the word _DEAD_ stamped over her stats box, only leaving behind her unmoving corpse.

“Ah—” Han slashed down the manticore and stared at Sally in surprise.

“...Oops?” Sally’s voice filtered through their heads. “My bad, I slipped.”

Cecilia was quick to cast a long-distance revival spell, which sent Janice back to full health and mana. It took almost twice the amount of time compared to Tiffany’s revive spell, making it around ten seconds. She made a mental note to check the description later. Sally quickly thanked the healer and rejoined the fight, but not without flashing a sheepish expression. “I guess we’ll have to check up on her sometimes,” Cecilia said, preparing another healing circle under the melee group.

Tiffany’s eyes never left Sally as she nodded, “I had… a heart attack… Almost...” She shook her head. “Let’s split up. I’ll take the melee group and Nic if I can. You focus on Janice.”

“Sure.”

They split up immediately after, and Cecilia focused on spamming spells as soon as they were off cooldown while Tiffany ran between checking up on Nic, who was doing well, and the melee group fending off manticores not far from the ranged fighters. She casted a wide-area debuff skill and left the rest to kill off their enemies.

“Do you think the boss or something would be here?” Dat asked, grunting as a manticore slammed itself against his arm with more force than he’d expected. “There’s usually a boss to command mobs like these.”

“I see something that way,” Nic said, nodding his head somewhere on his left side. They all squinted to see where he was referring to, which turned out to be a sea of green like every other direction around them. “I used a tracking skill. The level seems higher than the manticores.”

Dat nodded. “Guys! We’re heading that way!”

Sally was the first to break from the fighting and sprint towards the trees, slashing at manticores blocking her path. As she, Han, and Dat charged their way forward, Nic and Janice offered assistance in the back by casting area-based spells of fireballs, icicles, and the occasional thunderbolt. Arrows multiplied and rained from the sky as Nic continuously shot into the air.

“I think…” Cecilia’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a golem?”

The large golem towered over the crowd of manticores, cracked face crumbling with each movement. Though it was almost thrice the height of an average human, the golem moved slower than the manticores, its pace almost comparable to a snail. It let out a loud groan, and, at the sight of humans, tossed a tree at the party.

Dat rushed to the front and slammed his arms down. The force caused some of the earth to spike up, forming a sturdy wall that prevented the tree from crashing into them. He huffed, “Does anyone have an analysing skill?”

“Locked,” Tiffany and Cecilia said in unison.

“I do.” A large, glowing magic circle appeared over Nic’s as he stared directly into the golem’s eyes. He lifted his bow and nocked another arrow, causing the outer patterns of the circle to expand. His vision zoomed each time he pulled the arrow further back. “It’s stronger than a regular golem after being on a rampage for a while. I don’t think it’s that big of a threat.”

Janice pointed a finger at the golem and shot out an icicle, small but quick, and it froze the golem before shattering into particles of ice in less than seconds. “Uh—that was fast.” She stared at her finger in wonder. “Am I that strong or was it just weak?”

“I mean, the manticores aren’t much of a problem. We just didn’t know how to combine our skills to use them effectively.” Sally gestured to Han, who was easily killing the rest of the manticores left and right. “Han and I found some chain skills, so we can kill them in seconds now. Same goes for Dat, I think.”

Once the monster corpses dissipated into the air again, the team gathered their things and stared at each other in silence. They didn’t expect for the source of the attacks to directly confront them like this.

“Do you think we should move on to the next mission in the cave near here?” Tiffany asked. “It’s barely dusk, and we shouldn’t have much of a problem with a dragon now that we got our skills down.”

“But you and Cece haven’t found your weapons yet,” Sally interjected. “What if we need healers?”

“Seven healing spells should be enough for the both of us, right, Cece?” Tiffany waved her hand dismissively as she turned to Cecilia, only to find the other healer nowhere in sight. “Oh, right.”

“Where’d she go?” Sally asked, looking around. 

Tiffany let out a short exhale. “She went to go pee in the bushes.”

There was silence from the group.

“Anyway,” she continued, “with the amount of fighting we’re doing, we might as well just have our sticks evolve to max level. It’s not like anything’s gonna go wrong, right?

Dat shrugged. “Why not? We can always retreat and go back if we’re struggling.”

“Sure, then,” Janice said, turning to the other three DPS members. “I have no objections. Han? Sally? Nic?”

“I don’t see a problem.”

“I’ll go.”

Nic gave a thumbs up.

“So it’s decided.” Dat stood up straight, stretching his arms and moving them in slow, circular motions. “Off to the mysterious cave we go.”

——— 

“Is everyone ready?” Hidden behind a large rock, the party peered over the stone to look at the large red dragon resting further inside the cave. Dat glanced around slowly and made eye contact with everyone, giving a nod back when they confirmed their positions. “I’ll tank, melee in the back, ranged a bit further away, and healers on the sides,” he reminded. “Yes?”

“Yes,” the rest of the group replied in whispers.

“On the count of three.” Dat stood up and held up three fingers, rushing out when the last digit dropped. “Go!”

The dragon was already standing, wings spread as it greeted them with a roar. It slashed at Dat, who jumped and punched the arm back onto the ground. Nic, Janice, Han, and Sally were already unleashing a flurry of attacks at its back, doing well with dodging the occasional swipe of the tail or wings. Tiffany and Cecilia had already casted their debuffs on the creature to lower its defense.

“Lead it outside!” Dat ordered. “It’s too small in here to fight!”

They paused in their attacks and waited for Dat to bait the dragon with another aggro increasing skill. What they didn’t expect was for Dat to quite literally climb onto its head and yell into its ears, jumping down and running outside when a large claw swiped at him. The rest of the party followed the dragon—who was angrily chasing after Dat at this point—outside to see the area completely burnt. 

“Watch for the fire!” Cecilia yelled over the sounds of the dragon’s hissing. It managed to burn Dat’s leg enough to cause him to falter, and, taking the chance before he could be healed, clawed at him, successfully knocking him back. Little dragon minions suddenly spawned and scrambled towards the tank, biting at his boots and jumping over him.

Dat stumbled over a rock and nearly fell. “Oof.”

“Dat, you good?” Janice hollered in the middle of casting a blizzard spell. Ice magic seemed to have a greater effect on the dragon, so she switched completely to ice attacks after taming the forest fire that threatened to spread. Wind picked up and blew snow and hail around them as dragon minions were caught in the whirlwind, dying and disintegrating before they could fall back to the ground. Their drops fell with a small clatter.

Unfortunately, she was too distracted trying to get rid of the dragon minions when the dragon boss turned around and lunged at the rest of the team. Janice managed to dodge the attack, but Sally and Han, who had blocked with their weapons, hit the wall of the cave entrance as the force sent them flying back. The dragon tried to attack Janice again, this time succeeding as it grabbed her leg with its teeth and tossed her against the fallen melee duo. “Aggro!” Tiffany shouted, running away as the large red aggro circle appeared under her feet. “Dat! Take the aggro back!”

Dat slammed his powerfists against the ground and pulled the dragon’s attention once more. When he moved to punch it in the face, it suddenly stood on its hind legs and spread its wings, letting out a roar that called back the remaining dragon minions. Seconds later, a black magic circle appeared over the dragon’s head and fell to the ground. Two additional wings sprouted from its back, and the health bar went back to its full amount.

“This boss has two forms?” Dat asked no one in particular, incredulous. “For a D rank mission?” He squinted at the words _ Forest Dragon: Final Form _ and braced himself for an attack as the creature opened its jaw and prepared to spit out fire. Raising his powerfists, Dat casted his blocking skill.

At the same time, Cecilia’s stick began glowing. She ignored the carvings that appeared in favor of casting the two newly unlocked skills in Dat’s direction while hoping it would help him somehow. When a shield appeared in front of Dat, absorbing the dragon’s fire, she stared at it in mild surprise and turned to stare at Tiffany. 

“What’s the cooldown?” the other healer asked, gesturing to the large shield protecting Dat.

“Uh—” Cecilia glanced at the number hovering over the skill’s icon. “Two minutes.”

“What does it say?”

“Cast a shield over a party member that absorbs up to 80 percent of damage taken. Skill level one,” Cecilia read aloud. “What—” 

“Watch out—!” Having recovered, Han quickly pushed Cecilia away from a fireball the dragon spat in her direction. Sally grabbed Tiffany by the back of her cloak and tugged her in the other direction, wincing when the stick took this as a moment to glow and evolve.

“Thanks,” Tiffany said, healing Sally before the latter rejoined the battle. Han gave a smile and followed after the reaper, swords glowing an icy blue colour.

Dat looked over the dragon at his team and yelled through the telepathic link, “Combine your attacks and aim for the neck!”

Janice stood in the back with her arms outstretched, another magic circle forming around her disc as a neon blue light surged from the lines. “I’m gonna cast this as soon as y’all hit it,” she yelled.

Just as Sally’s scythe was about to reach the dragon’s neck to pull it down, a flash of lightning appeared over them before a volley of thunder rained down, striking the remaining trees and dragon minions. Peals of thunder echoed around the forest, ringing in their ears. A rather large thunderbolt hit the dragon, frying it almost immediately, and the bolts somehow managed to avoid the party while killing off the rest of the minions. Only the fried corpse of the dragon remained after the thunderstorm came to a halt, tongue sticking out and eyes comically shaped in an X mark.

The melee duo dug their feet into the ashen dirt to stop themselves from tumbling headfirst into the dragon. Janice stopped her spell casting midway, puzzled as she tried to process the sudden death. Even Dat was confused, powerfists still raised to block another attack.

“Who did that?” Han asked, staring at the dead dragon rather dazedly.

“Not me.”

“I didn’t do that.”

“I was trying to pull aggro.”

“I was healing Janice.”

“I was healing Dat.”

Everyone’s head snapped towards Nic, whose eyes were flitting between his bow and the sky. “I was experimenting and this happened,” he said flatly. There was no expression on his face as his eyes followed the singular arrow that fell back down and embedded itself into the dirt.

“_ How _ did you manage to cast pure magic with your arrows?” Tiffany asked. “Han and Sally can’t even cast magic.”

Nic shrugged. “I took back the arrow I gave Janice, Then I used the magic that was collected from her. I didn’t think it would work.”

“Is that one of your skills??” Han asked.

When Nic shook his head and said something along the lines of _ he thought of it himself after reading through his skills_, Cecilia muttered in amazement, “That’s so OP.”

“What the heck,” Dat added. “That’s so cool.”

Sally sighed, unequipping her scythes and hooking them behind her back. “We better report this to Katherine.”


	3. I Can’t Believe—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cursed.

“Found anything?” Katherine’s face popped up over one end of the table while the rest of the group gathered around the other end in a semi-circle of sorts. The archiver glanced over their slightly disheveled appearances and frowned, directing her attention to a specific person sitting at the front of the group. “Why do you guys look like you got tossed through some bushes?”

Sally—who had it the worst with her absolute bird nest of twigs and leaves, all sticking out like a savage who lived in the forest for decades—reached up and plucked out a leaf from the pile. “We had a fight with a dragon and some of its children. Don’t mind me.”

“I don’t see a difference,” Dat said, patting his own head to get rid of the remnants of ash from the earlier fight. “It looks like Sally on a regular day when she doesn’t brush her hair.”

Sally whipped her head towards the tank with a distorted shushing sound and hissed, “Do you want to die?” For emphasis, she reached her hand over her shoulder and grabbed a scythe, holding it threateningly with a glare.

Dat merely shook his head, expression almost smug as he leaned back in his chair. “You cannot defeat me—I’m death.”

“Not in this world.” Cecilia gestured to the pair of scythes that were returned to their holders on Sally’s back. “She’s the reaper here. You’re just some guy with huge gloves and boots.”

Janice straightened her back against her chair, and with her arms spread, she announced rather loudly, “So the day Sally finally reclaims her rule over Hell has come.” Face solemn—though everyone knew it was only an act—Janice waved her hands over her face in an almost prayer-like motion. “No more dictatorship for Dat.”

Tiffany dipped her head and said in the most monotone voice, “Hail Satan.”

In the back, Han clapped softly as if to praise a ruler. “The true inheritor of the throne.”

Nic hummed lowly and answered Katherine upon seeing the confusion written across her face, “It turns out the cause of the attacks were a group of wild manticores and a giant golem in the forest. We got rid of them and moved on to the dragon in the cave. It’s also dead.”

“So are you guys coming back soon?” Katherine asked, nodding as she took her own copy of the missions and stamped the word _ complete _ on the corners. She put it on the large stack of papers placed beside her arm. “What about your skills?”

“After this, we’re reporting to the village chief about the monsters eliminated,” Janice said.

“We’re pretty good with our skills now,” Han added. “Dat told us on the way back that we just need to work on formations and stuff. We should also get to know our own classes and stats.”

“Speaking of stats—” Tiffany scooted closer to the screen, “—how do I pull up the party’s stats?”

Assuming the world they were somehow transported into had game elements like any MMORPG game, there should also be a personal statistics list for each person. However, other than the basic health and mana bars shown on the sides of their screens for each party member, they had no idea how to pull up the finer details of each other.

“There’s two ways from what I see in the books: directly look at the person and think about inspecting them or look at their name in your party group and imagine you’re calling up a box of their stats.” Katherine shifted her focus from the healer to everyone in the party. “Everyone should be able to do it.”

“Ohhh,” Cecilia marveled when everyone’s stats filled her vision. The boxes included their attack power, health, mana, critical rate, and everything else in numbers or percentages. It even included their equipped items along with stats of said equipment. “That’s cool.”

“My swords have names!” Han exclaimed, eyes wide as she looked over the pieces of her gear and accessories. “Everything has a cool name!”

“The book,” Dat started, “does it also give details about our classes?”

“Wait, wait, hold up,” Janice interrupted, waving her hand to signal for a stop. “All these classes and terms are confusing. Can someone give an explanation?”

Katherine shook her head. “The books can only say so much. It’s better if you go out and experiment yourself instead of reading and trying to memorise everything.”

“Oh right.” Sally’s head suddenly snapped up, and when everyone’s attention shifted to her, she continued, “I died, but it didn’t feel like I died—I just couldn’t move. Can people die here?”

“I died too,” Janice added with a confused expression. “Yeah, it just felt like I had sleep paralysis or something. I could still speak to the team too.”

“That’s weird.” Katherine’s upper body went out of view as she got up and returned with a rather thick book. She rapidly flipped through the pages, adding on as she skimmed through the words, “I was halfway done with this book. Give me a second.”

“What’s that?” Han asked curiously. The letters on the cover were hard to decipher, and she gave up after trying to decode it before she got a headache.

“A book about blessings and gifts from the gods. It should be around here…” After flipping through for a few more seconds, Katherine came to a halt and set the book down, eyes rapidly flickering left and right as she read the contents. “Yes, there! Teams with adventurers below level twenty—the max is 120, by the way—will all be blessed with _ Frey’s Blessing _, which is basically a death prevention spell from the gods. You can find it in your status tab in your stats, I think.”

_ Frey’s Blessing: Members that are under level twenty or in a party with an adventurer under level twenty will receive this blessing. Frey’s Blessing will give healers a revive spell that will disappear after they reach level twenty one. Those who die while Frey’s Blessing is still active will have a chance to be resurrected by their party members (or themselves if they are a healer). The blessed will not experience any pain when hurt. _

Janice seemed to have realised something as she glanced up in horror. “I could’ve actually died.” She looked at Sally, who nodded mutely. The feeling of brushing death weighed on them with an inexplicable feeling of pressure on the party.

“I mean, we’re barely at level five,” Tiffany offered. “I’m sure we’ll be capable enough to not die once we hit level 21.”

“Adventurer…” Cecilia echoed, testing the word. “What’s the difference?”

“Basically, people are all born as normal citizens of wherever they are. It’s like the village you just saved. They’re all regular, non-adventurers,” Katherine explained. “You can choose to become one any time, and when you do, you get to choose your class. Adventurers are then blessed with magic to cast spells and use skills.”

“So, like, I’m a normal kid until I hit twenty or something, then say I want to become an adventurer, and I’ll just become one after choosing a class?” Tiffany asked, pointing a finger at herself.

“There are more steps involving being blessed to use magic and needing to find a priest for the blessing, but that shouldn’t concern you too much. Just know we’re all adventurers.”

Cecilia looked at Katherine. “So we all chose our classes?”

“That’s what our other selves did.” Katherine shrugged. “If you don’t like your class, complain to them.”

“I like mine,” Janice said, playing with the small flames that danced around her fingertips. “I can do cool magic.”

“How does leveling up work?” Han asked. “The max level is 120, so we must’ve worked really hard to level up, right?”

“Killing monsters gives you experience points. It’s those little sparkles that appear from killed monsters that fly to you.” Katherine paused. “The higher leveled the monster you kill, the more experience points you gain.”

“Wait.” Sally waved a hand, glancing around questioningly. “If everyone’s at max level right now, then how do we all have Frey’s Blessing?”

“What level are Cece and Tiff?” Katherine asked. “I think it has to do with them.”

Cecilia pulled up her own stats and squinted at the number. “It says I’m level three.”

Tiffany blinked. “Same.”

“Then it’s probably because they lost their weapons. Your weapon is the most important and directly related to your level since each class can have different clothes, accessories, and other stuff, but not weapons.” Katherine gestured to the two healers. “You two have a revive spell, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yep.”

“Are you close to finding your original weapons, then? There’s nothing in the archives specifically about our weapons.”

“We have no clue.” Dat shook his head in disappointment. “At this rate, we might as well grind for XP until their sticks hit max level.”

Nodding her head in approval, Han added, “It might be a good way for us to get used to our skills.”

“And learn about our classes,” Nic interjected. “Formations are good too.”

Janice waved a hand to catch everyone’s attention. “That reminds me, what’s this mana thing below my health bar?”

“Mana is like your capacity of magic. When you cast spells and skills, it costs mana. You can see how much it takes by examining your skills in the skill tree,” Katherine explained. “Mana regenerates eventually, but each class has their own regeneration speed and consumption amount for each skill. You’ll need to watch for how much you’re using or you’ll hit zero and be stuck running around.”

“If that’s the case, then why has my mana been at 100 percent this entire time?” Sally asked. “Is it also because of the blessing?”

Squinting, Tiffany looked over the description again. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Unlimited mana as long as it’s active.” Tiffany huffed. “Well, that makes things easier for me and Cece—at least, until the blessing is gone.”

“What?” Cecilia asked. “There’s more to healing?”

Tiffany waved her hand dismissively. “You’ll eventually have to manage the team’s mana to prevent them from reaching zero too quickly. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard. You just need to remember to cast the spell every now and then.”

“Anyone else have questions?” Katherine asked the non-healers. “Did you guys go over monster drops or potions? Item rarity?”

“I have some concerns about this tablet thing,” Sally said, holding up said device and placing it on the table. “What is it?”

“That thing right there is a Hal Slate.” Katherine pulled an exact replica from somewhere off-screen. “This one’s an older version. It basically works like tablets from our world and an encyclopedia of sorts. You just type in the description or take a picture and it’ll give you information about it.”

“You can take pictures with this thing??” Han picked up the Hal Slate and examined it from all corners. “Where’s the camera?”

The thick, blue tablet was almost the size of a regular Earth tablet, its width measuring at almost a quarter length of a pinky finger, and decorated with the guild’s dragon logo on the back of the case. When Han flipped it over, only a pair of dragon eyes stared back at her.

“I actually don’t know.” Katherine shrugged. “Just point the back at whatever you wanna take a picture of and it’ll appear.”

“Are there other features too?” Sally inquired, fiddling around with the edges when the warrior passed it back to her. “I noticed some other icons.”

“You can pull up a map and mark some stuff with pins or something. There’s also a binocular function that has a night vision mode as well, but I didn’t play around with the Hal Slate that much. You can figure it out on your own, I guess.”

“Wait, you said a tablet, right?” Cecilia asked, and when Katherine gave a nod, she added, “Does it play music too?”

“I’m not sure about that either.” Katherine opened up her Hal Slate and squinted at the screen as she quickly tapped the surface. “I don’t see a music option. This world obviously doesn’t have the internet.”

“Imagine fighting while we put on epic battle music,” Han commented. “That would be so cool.”

“Yeah, just go, _ Ale— _ ” Tiffany paused, then coughed. “Wait, I can’t get copyrighted. Imagine going _ Alixo, play this _ every time someone messes up. That would be funny.” Her remark received several looks of amusement, exasperation, and disappointment (that one was from Sally).

Janice leaned forward. “What about the drops? We got some stuff from fighting those monsters earlier. I wanna see what we got!”

“Fighting higher level monsters gives you higher level drops. You can use them to make potions for yourselves. For that, you need to… uhh…” Katherine leaned over and pulled out another book from the stack beside her. She quickly skimmed through a bookmarked page. “You’ll need to find a potions shop and ask the potions master to make it for you. Rarity goes from ranks C to S.”

“This is like Minecraft,” Cecilia noted. Janice, Han, Dat, and Nic nodded in agreement.

“Will potions be useful here?” Han asked. “Will it be small like restoring some health or would it give other effects too?”

Katherine closed the large book pushed it aside. The pile beside her arm moved dangerously close to the edge of the table as the book occupied its former position. “It all depends on the materials you make it from,” she said, eyes never breaking contact as she reached out a hand to push back the pile when it fell. “The higher the rarity, the more and better the effects.”

“What do you plan on doing now?” Katherine asked Dat. “I can join you now, right?”

“I’m not sure,” Dat replied. “We might still have the blessing, but it might become a habit to rely on it too much, so I want us to get used to fighting without putting our lives in danger. Receiving attacks will be painful too, according to the description.” At the last part, he glanced over to Sally and Janice, who blinked back at him.

“If that’s the case, then go to Dawn Island. I found a small section in this book about places that are dangerous or good for grinding and all. Apparently it’s infested with high-level monsters that keep spawning for some reason. The thick dark miasma there causes them to respawn again after being killed, unlike other monsters that die permanently once you finish them. Most of the monsters there are A to S rank.”

“Won’t it be too dangerous for us?”

Katherine shook her head. “People figured out how to keep the numbers under control so now it’s just a farming spot.”

“Farming?” Janice repeated, voice incredulous. “People are planting things there? With the monsters??”

“Farming is—” Dat paused. “Actually, I’ll explain some terms too when we go over everything there.” He turned to Katherine and gave her a nod. “We’ll spend a few days at most on Dawn Island until everyone gets used to their roles. We’ll work on some formations and class traits while we’re at it.”

“Good luck, everyone.” Katherine gave a nod back. “I’ll try to search some more for clues about Cece and Tiff’s weapons. If not, I’ll ask around for a way home.”

“Good luck to you too!!” Han said, giving a (very effective) morale-boosting grin. “Make sure to rest well!!”

“I will, thanks.” The image cut off just like that, leaving the group staring at the wooden dining table in the inn. Silence fell over the party as birds chirped in the background.

Sally was the first to speak up. “Should be report back to the village chief?”

———

“This town is so nice,” Han commented as they departed from the village chief’s house. After a few minutes trying to refuse Willy and the town’s offer to add Ruta Village under their rule, they eventually settled on an alliance: the farmers would provide the guild with a set amount of crops, and Dracheheim would pay them back with 75 percent of the profits. This way, the villagers had some other way of making money while the guild had another food source to feed their people. None of the villagers had any complaints or refusals—it was a win-win situation.

“I want to shop here, but my wallet says no.” Sally glanced at the pouch hanging on her belt, then paused as if realising something. “Wait…”

“We’re rich,” Dat said leisurely, already heading straight towards a clothing shop with his pouch of gold in hand. “Time to find the most cursed outfit.”

“Wait—Dat, no—” Tiffany hurried after Dat and waved to the rest of the group right as she stopped at the entrance. “I guess we meet up in two hours? I’ve been meaning to buy something here too.”

“That’s not a problem,” Janice replied. She turned to ask Nic what he was doing only to find him eyeing a weapon shop. “Where are you going, Nic?” she asked, despite having a good idea of which store he’d visit.

With a wave to the nearly empty quiver at his hip, Nic replied, “I need more arrows.” It was a pity he was the only one that needed to refill his weapons, but at least they somehow all weighed like one arrow no matter how many he carried at once.

“Oh, right, you don’t have unlimited arrows like video games.” Janice smiled. “Have fun.”

“Yes.”

Han, Sally, and Cecilia were interested in an art store not far from the inn they previously stayed at. Since Janice was both interested too and didn’t want to wander off by herself, she stuck with the three as they excitedly hurried into the store. The bell hung on the door chimed gently, indicating that customers had entered. Intricately sculpted crystals, vivid paintings, and balls of colorful glass hung around the walls and shelves as the man behind the reception counter greeted them.

“Welcome to the Ruta Arts Store.” His eyes crinkled with his smile as he walked around the counter. “Would you like to buy anything?

“Oh, no, we’re just looking around for now,” Han replied, eyes slowly wandering around in wonder. “Everything's so beautiful.”

The man flashed a grin. “Thank you.”

Signs that hung off the wall labeled the different sections the store items were split into. Sally wandered off to the paint section, wondering what kind of paint and art supplies this world had. On the other side, Cecilia was marvelling at the banana statue that nearly reached her chest if was set down on the floor. Bright, fluttery dance items caught Han’s attention from another corner, and she excitedly scurried over in interest.

“Excuse me,” Janice started, turning towards the man after looking around for a while. “I noticed there’s a sign on your shop door that says jewelry. You sell jewelry here?”

“My wife runs the jewelry section.” The man led her to the opposite end of the store and opened a rather intricately-decorated door. Vines of what looked like jewels ran along the edges of the wood, framing it nicely like a photograph. “She’s currently out right now and should be back soon. Our stores are joined together, so I’m looking after it for her before she gets back.”

“Ohhh, thats cool.”

“Would you like to look?”

Janice stared at the clear cases placed against the walls of the otherwise simple room, eyes lighting up at the glittery accessories locked inside the glass. “May I?”

The man took out a key and unlocked all the cases, raising the lid so it lay flat against the walls, exposing the contents. “My wife will be back soon. I trust our village savior enough not to break anything.” Laughing at his own words, he stepped away and allowed enough space for Janice to pass through. “I’ll leave the door open, then.”

“Thank you!” Smile wide, Janice stepped into the room and gawked at the amount of jewelry displayed in the room. On one side, the step-like case displayed countless rings, earrings, and bracelets, the dim lights failing to show off the shine reflected off the beautifully carved gemstones. Everywhere was a mix of colours—red, blue, orange, anything Janice could think of. Some were carved with gold, others with silver, and there were even bracelets with flecks of glitter sprinkled over the smooth surface.

The other end consisted entirely of necklaces and other headpieces that would be rarely seen in the modern day. Circlets, amulets, and other fantasy accessories hung around mannequins to reveal their dazzling stones and designs. Noticing that some had signs plastered on the wall above the mannequins, Janice stepped closer to the nearest sign and squinted at the words.

_ Amulet of Strength _ _  
_ _ Description: A stone taken from the ores in Gleare Mountain amd carved into an amulet. The chain is created from pure silver. _ _  
_ _ Effect: increases physical attack by 175% when equipped _

Humming in interest at the necklace, Janice tore her gaze away and moved on to the mannequin beside it. 

_ Circlet of Flames _ _  
_ _ Description: A circlet made of flamestones and gold. _   
Effect: enhances fire magic, increases critical rate for fire-based skills

It seemed that these accessories also increased specific abilities. Janice ooh-ed and carefully took off the circlet to examine it. Her fingers slowly traced over the swirls carved on the sides, the bright, crimson stone embedded in the centre, and the foreign letters found inside the circlet. In a moment of curiosity, she lifted the accessory and placed it gently on her head. It was a perfect fit. Janice moved to put it back, but it wouldn’t come off.

It was also just her luck that the man’s wife decided to return.

Janice froze as the door suddenly opened, eyes meeting the woman’s in fear. The woman gasped, dropping her keys as she took a few steps back, and stared at Janice in shock. Thinking the other most likely had the wrong thoughts, Janice quickly stuttered out, “Wait—” 

_ “Thief!” _ The lady screeched, pointing an accusing finger at Janice when several people outside came to her aid. “There’s a thief in my store!”

“Ma’am, you have the wrong idea. I was trying it out and it wouldn’t come off!” Janice reached up again and attempted to pull it off to prove her innocence, but the circlet seemed to decide it would be a good time to fall right off her head right before her hands could even go above her shoulders. 

“...”

As if it couldn’t get any worse, the man from the art shop appeared right at that moment.

The jewelry shop owner gasped again. “A liar too!” 

“What—”

“Is it true you tried to steal from my wife?” Art Shop Man demanded. When Janice shook her head, he glanced at his wife only to see a disapproving look on her face. “Really.”

“Yes, really,” Janice sighed exasperatedly. “I didn’t steal—”

“Janice, you stole something?” Cecilia’s head popped up from the doorway behind the man, and Sally and Han followed, creating an image of a tree sprouting its branches. “I can’t believe—” 

Han brought a hand up to her mouth, surprise clearly written all over her countenance. “Janice stole something?”

“The thief of Theology strikes again,” Sally muttered, voice low enough for the other two to hear but not for Art Shop Man. They snickered at her remark, hiding themselves behind the reaper before they got caught.

_“_No, I _didn’t steal—”_ Once again, Janice was interrupted when two more people joined the chaos.

“What happened?” Tiffany asked as she and Dat emerged from the crowd that had formed around the store entrance. Carrying one full bag with each hand, Dat stalked over to the side to set them down. The summoner set down her single bag next to his. “I heard a scream?”

“This thief dared to steal something from my store!” the woman cried again, jabbing a finger at Janice rather aggressively. The crowd of onlookers instantly erupted into murmurs of pity for the woman, who had allegedly been betrayed by the supposed hero of their town in the form of thievery.

Tiffany gasped. “Janice, I can’t be_ lieve _...”

“Once a thief, always a thief,” Dat whispered through the party chat. Everyone sans Janice stiffened as they tried to hold back their laughter. Sally tried to cover up her slipped chuckle with a suspicious cough.

Deciding to be a good citizen, Nic, who had appeared out of nowhere, approached the sniffling lady. “Janice didn’t steal,” he said, offering her the Hal Slate Sally had. No one knew when she gave it to him, nor had they witnessed the exchange. “Look.”

The screen showed a short video of Janice right before she read the sign. Screen Janice glanced back at the circlet, placed it on her head with an obvious ooh-ing noise, and then proceeded to take it back off, only to have the thing stuck on her head. The woman sniffled loudly when the circlet refused to budge even after a particularly hard tug.

“Ohh, so it was a misunderstanding,” Dat said loudly. He then gave a pointed look to the crowd as if shooing them away. Most of the people at the front quickly understood his message and scurried away.

The crowd near the back heard his words and soon dispersed after a few more moments of talking amongst themselves, going back to their own business as if the whole ordeal never occurred. Only Theology, the man, and the woman were left standing outside the empty store, staring at the fallen circlet laying on the ground by Janice’s foot. She picked it up.

“I still don’t believe you,” the woman sniffed haughtily. Snatching back the circlet, she turned to her husband. “Do something about it!”

The man’s clearly conflicted expression was ignored as the woman stomped back into the shop and placed the circlet back on the mannequin. With yet another glare at Janice, she slammed the door close. They heard an audible click as the door locked.

“I apologise for the trouble,” Art Shop Man sighed. “It was my fault—I should’ve stayed in the room in case she returned early.”

“It’s no problem, sir.” Though Janice was still slightly miffed about the whole thievery ordeal, she could see where he was coming from. “I should’ve have touched it.”

“I’ll talk to the village chief and see what I can do.”

“All right.”

By the time the party had left the art store, Sally, Cecilia, and Han were each carrying two bags of art supplies they found interesting. Nic’s had his quiver filled with arrows again (he seemed particularly happy about the bomb arrows the store gave him as a bonus to his large purchase) and strolled happily on one end with a bag full of unknown contents. Janice ended up buying a few things from some other stores and carried a bag as well. Dat’s purchases were all clothing he could wear right away, and the bomber jacket and new jeans made him stand out even more from the crowd. Tiffany carried her own bag in one hand and fiddled with her stick using her free hand.

“Nic, how did you do that?” Cecilia asked, gesturing to the Hal Slate in his hands. “The video thing.”

“Just open up the camera function and tap the video button in the left corner,” he replied. Opening the camera, he pointed to the small red circle on the bottom left of the screen. “You record up to five minutes.” He handed the Slate to Cecilia, who fiddled with it before giving it back to Sally.

“Wait, does that mean you stalked Janice?” Han pointed out. “How else would you be able to record that?”

“I finished my purchase and used a skill to see what everyone else was doing,” Nic replied. “Janice plus dark room equals not good. Could be dangerous for her.”

“I’m just going to pretend that never happened,” Janice said flatly. Her words brought another round of laughter from the group.

“You can’t escape your fate,” Dat said. “Accept it, _ thief _.”

“At least she didn’t report you or something?” Tiffany offered with a pat on the back. Her words did not provide any comfort whatsoever, and Janice gave a heavy sigh.

At this point, they were already reaching the end gates of the village and preparing to set off for Dawn Island. It was already noon, and the journey was estimated to take about two days. Similar to when they first arrived, a crowd of villagers greeted them at the gate, but this time, the air felt off. They felt more… apprehensive.

“Why does it feel like they’re…” Unable to find the word, Han made a vague gesture hoping it would convey her thoughts. “Like… that.”

A bearded man with four other, more burly men approached them and lightly coughed. “Excuse me, but you’re not allowed here.” He was speaking to party, but his gaze fell on Janice alone.

“Wait, what?” Janice spluttered as the burly men pushed them outside the gates as if kicking them out. “What’s going on?”

Without a sound, Nic raised her hand and pointed her finger at the large board set up beside the village gate. “Maybe it’s because of that.”

“Huh?” Sally, who had been at the front of the group and had a better view of everything, squinted at the small paper in the center. “Wait—”

“Is that… a banned poster… of Janice?” Dat asked. 

_ “What?” _ Confused, Janice pushed her way to the front and found a picture of herself staring back at her. Under her face were the words: _ Banned from Ruta Village _ written in bright red ink. At the very top, bolded and larger than the red letters, the word _ thief _ clearly displayed the reason of her ban. “Excuse me, I’m _ what _ now?”

Tiffany gave a loud cackle and fell to the floor in a fit of giggles. Cecilia followed her seconds later, stuttering over her words as she gasped out, “I can’t be_ lieve _—” another gasp, “—they’re—they’re banning Janice who saved—” She was unable to finish her sentence as the rest of her words dissolved into another wave of cackles.

“There’s a banned poster of Janice at the gates of the town _she_ _saved_,” Tiffany finished for her, cackling madly and clapping her hands like a seal right after.

Even Nic was stifling his chuckles behind a hand as Janice stared ahead in shock. Han and Sally were doing no better, pretending to cover up their laughs with coughs that sounded too suspicious to be one. Dat, on the other hand, slapped a hand on a tree and roared with laughter, pointing at Janice as he nearly toppled over from the force of laughing. 

Many of the villagers found their behavior extremely unsettling and quickly walked away, going as far as to cover their children’s eyes like in those movies and television series.

Janice grabbed the paper off the gate with more aggression than expected and balled it up, waving her clenched fist in the air indignantly. _ “You!” _ she screamed, voice warbling like a duck. “Leave me alone!”

No one listened to her as they kept laughing, mirth reflected in their eyes.

———

Mounting their horses and setting off was fairly easy. There were no villagers to hold them back, and the compass in the Hal Slate worked as a great GPS system for Dawn Island. It was the confusion over how inventory space worked that kept them near the gates for a while. With so many bags from their shopping spree, they didn’t think about travelling on horse while carrying their things.

“Maybe our inventory isn’t as small as it seems?” Cecilia suggested. Following the party’s hums of agreement were minutes of silence as everyone busied themselves with figuring out how their inventory system worked.

It turned out their pockets worked as a door to another dimension and could store up to 300 items. All they had to do was open up their inventory screen, think of storing away they item they looked at, and said item would flash and disappear, leaving an icon in the rows of boxes under the inventory list. They could choose to look at the item details anytime and summon it with a simple thought. No one knew if 300 was the limit, but they didn’t think anyone would need to carry more than 300 things at once.

They quickly stashed their purchased items into their inventories and decided to look at what they bought after finishing their business at Dawn Island. They could technically settle down and take them out now, but there was a risk of coming across dangerous monsters, and the healers could only do so much with their miniscule healing.

“Tiff, I swear if you start hoarding here too,” Dat said, but it was already too late; the summoner tossed her things and squinted at the numbers that flashed back.

“Uh, no, I totally don’t have too many things,” she answered back, sweating at the _ 79 _ in her vision. The amount of gold she collected was displayed at the bottom of the inventory list, which she kept glancing at in obvious glee. “A lot of gold, though.”

Dat didn’t bat an eyelash and turned his eyes back to the road. “We’ll ride until dark and rest depending on where we stop. If it’s near a town or city, well go there. If not, we’ll sleep in the trees and take turns with shifts.”

“That’s fine,” Sally said. “How long should we each stay up?”

Han quickly counted with her fingers. “Maybe an hour or so. There’s seven of us and maybe nine hours until the sun rises again.”

Dat looked over the rest of the party. “Is everyone fine with that?”

“I’m good,” Janice said.

Nic nodded.

“Yep,” Cecilia replied.

Tiffany gave an okay sign. “Yeet.”

Late at night, Theology’s summoner found herself sitting atop a tree, mentally counting down the seconds before the end of her shift. Right as it hit zero, she glanced around and found Han sleeping two branches away from her. She quietly moved over and lightly shook the warrior. “Haaaan,” she whispered. “Hellooooo.”

“Is it my turn?” Han whispered back as she groggily woke up. When Tiffany nodded, she sat up and dazedly blinked a few times, reaching for her swords to hang them back around her waist.

Tiffany pointed to the branched she had been sitting on minutes ago. “Yeah, just sit over there or something. It’s higher and gives more view of the land.” She pulled out the pouch and Hal Slate Sally handed to her before going to sleep. “The camera’s on night mode. It works for the binocular mode too, so don’t worry about the dark.”

Han held the device up to her face and panned around. Sure enough, everything was brighter on screen, displaying clear details of the trees, grass, and leaves in the darkness of the night. “Wow, this is cool.”

“Yeah, It’s a mystery how the battery—” As she looked up to face the warrior, Tiffany’s eyes fell on something behind Han, and she opened her mouth with a large inhale. Before she could scream, she clapped her hands over her face and muffled it, eyes staring back at Han in fear and distress. She freed one hand to point at whatever it was.

Han quickly pulled out her swords and turned around, left arm extended in preparation to slice the threat. Her other sword moved in front of her face in a defensive stance in case the opponent decided to attack first. There was no more room on the tree branch, so she could only brace herself and hook a leg around it to prevent from falling. 

She didn’t expect to come face-to-face with a giant cockroach-looking bug.

With a body as large as a human torso, pincer-like claws for a mouth, fuzzy antennae sticking out and nearly brushing against Han’s cheek, and long, prickly legs large enough to show the small hairs covering them, the roach-bug flapped its wings and jumped at Han with a buzzing sound.

Tiffany whisper-screamed, eyes wide as she broke off a nearby branch with strength the two didn’t even know she had and smacked it with a crazed look before Han could even react. The bug thing smashed against the tree with a loud crunch and bounced off the wood, flapping its wings as it regained its balance. The front half of its legs wiggled with loud cracking noises as it buzzed angrily.

“Han!” Tiffany whispered loudly—though she may as well talk normally with the volume of her voice—as she waved the branch around like a madman. It worked as a decent fly swatter and temporarily warded away the roach. “Kill it!_ Kill it!! _”

“Oh geez—” Han dodged the roach as it flew at her and landed silently on another branch. “I don’t even want to touch it!”

With another loud buzz at its miss, the roach swerved in midair and went for Tiffany instead. Its mouth repeatedly opened and closed as it aimed for the exposed skin of her wrist. When it missed yet again as the summoner ducked, it buzzed and flew towards her face, large bug eyes staring at her menacingly.

_ “Dumb roach-looking thing,” _Tiffany hissed vehemently, lifting her leg to kick it. She was thankful for the boots and pants; if her outfit was more like Janice or Cecilia’s, the entire forest would be awake by now. As soon as her boots connected with the bug’s underside and sent it flying away, a shiver crawled up her spine, and immense panic flooded her brain. She immediately yelped and retreated further back towards the tree. “I just touched it,” she said in horror, no longer trying to keep her voice hushed. “I just touched a giant roach.”

Han stared at her in a mixture of disbelief, disgust, and something akin to amazement. She spun her right sword and tossed it into the air, changing her grip as she caught it so that the hilt was facing her thumb’s direction. With a quick and smooth slash, the sword glowed a cyan blue as it cleanly cut off the roach’s head, freezing both sides and preventing any blood from falling. The head fell to the floor and shattered into pieces of ice fragments with little sound.

“Nice job, Han.” Tiffany whispered, heart beating rapidly under the hand she held over her chest as she looked down and saw nothing but black. 

Han stared at roach’s frozen body in disgust, face contorting as she tried to poke it off the tree with her sword. Each time the tip was about to touch the thin layer of ice, she retracted her hand, clearly not wanting to touch it. “Can you... push it off?” she whispered to Tiffany, gesturing to the long tree branch in the other’s hand.

Tiffany held up her own branch and was about to poke the body off when it began to shake. “Han—” 

The roach broke free of the ice and shook off the remnants of ice still clinging to its body. Its prickly legs wriggled as it tried to get rid of the ice covering where its head previously was. The two now-very-awake adventurers didn’t know whether to thank the gods for the lack of blood or curse them for sending this creature that spawned from the depths of hell.

Apparently, the roach gave up getting rid of the ice and instead flew directly at Tiffany, who had dropped her branch in shock and was now defenseless. It had no mouth or eyes for intimidation, but the loud buzzing from its wings was enough to scare her into retreating higher up the tree. She realised halfway up that it was a big mistake, as she had no other escape while the _ thing _ chasing her had wings. In her moment of extreme fear, she took out her stick and spat, _ “You stupid roach—” _

A rain of white fire fell from the large circle summoned above the offending creature. The roach thing dodged most of the attacks, but the fire that managed to hit it burned away some of its legs and created large holes in its wings. It flew unevenly in the air before crashing right beside a certain summoner.

Tiffany yelled, violently kicking it as her arms flailed, but some of the bug’s legs managed to grab onto her boots and prevent her from completely pushing it off the tree. When it still refused to budge, her eyes flashed a golden yellow, and with a sudden surge of strength, she swung her leg and hurled it towards the tree. It crashed against the trunk and lay there unmoving for a while. The summoner turned to Han, eyes still glowing. “Han!” she whisper-yelled, “Kill it!!”

Han briefly wondered how no one had woken up at this point.

She jumped in front of Tiffany and slashed at the legs this time. The prickly things came off like grass being cut—except in this case it was prickly, hairy, disgusting grass—and the bug retreated in fear, wings flapping incessantly as the buzzing noise still continued. When it fell on Han’s foot, where some of her skin was uncovered, she shivered at the horrible feeling of bug legs and jumped back with a small shriek. 

She conjured a sword from the air and sent it speeding toward the roach with a flick of her wrist. It pierced the hard shell like jelly and pinned it against the tree trunk in seconds, purple blood dripping down like slime. “Eugh!” Briefly, she thanked whoever did the sleeping arrangements that only she and Tiffany slept on the tree. She wasn’t sure about the others’ sanity if they woke up to roach blood dripping all over them.

Tiffany stared at the dead roach and blood that soon disintegrated. The only traces of the earlier scuffle were the sword still embedded into the tree, the shallow slices on the leaves from Han’s swords, and the tree branch that had been broken off to be used as a makeshift weapon. She sat there, unmoving, and blankly pointed at the spot where the roach previously occupied. “A giant roach,” she whispered, voice barely audible over the almost-silent night. “There was a giant _ roach _.”

Han stared at the spot the roach had touched and considered using the Hal Slate to find water and dunk herself in it. Scratch that—no amount of water would heal her from any second of that incident. Tiffany was quick to react and pulled out a vial of water from her inventory, casting a quick purifying spell over it, and poured the entire contents over Han’s leg. Then she casted another cleansing spell over the warrior before sitting down.

Tugging out the sword, Han nodded solemnly and moved to sit beside her, equally shaken and traumatised. “Yes, a roach.”

Tiffany patted her back in comfort while her eyes continued to blankly stare ahead. “This is gonna haunt me forever.”

“Me too.”

“The forest is terrifying.”

“...Mhm.”

For the entirety of Han’s shift, both stayed awake with eyes like an owl’s, fearing for both their own and their party members' lives. Every movement from the bushes below would be met with a sword (courtesy of Han who could control them with her hands) or a branch (Tiffany wondered how there were still so many branches left on the tree when morning finally arrived). Who knows if another roach would attack?

When everyone gathered around a campfire during breakfast the next morning, the two learned that no one else encountered anything during their shift. If anyone did end up fighting a giant roach, they didn’t mention it.

“Maybe you were just dreaming,” Cecilia said as she munched on the deer meat they had caught earlier. “I’ve heard of two people having the same dream before.”

Han’s eyes flickered to the cut on the tree made by her sword.

“No, no, it was definitely real,” Tiffany insisted. “It was like this huge.” She formed a circle around her torso with her hands and turned to Han. “Right, Han?”

Ha nodded. “We even fought it for a while. Did no one else hear the crashing?”

“Well, not me,” Janice said. “I had a good sleep.”

“I’m not finding anything here,” Sally said as she held up the Hal Slate, “and Katherine said it included everything in the world, including plants, wild animals, and anything else we can think of.” She attempted to type in the description once more, only to receive an error message.

_ Error: monster does not exist _

“What?” Holding out her hand, Tiffany quickly typed in the description again when Sally handed over the tablet. “But I saw…”

“Are you sure it’s not because roaches haunted you too much in our world?” Cecilia asked. “You _ did _have a roach problem a week before this whole thing.”

“I clearly saw it,” Tiffany tried again. “I even _ kicked _ it.”

“There’s no evidence of a roach, though,” Sally interjected.

Tiffany gave a string of incoherent noises. “I _ can’t believe _—” She turned back to where the roach had died, hoping maybe at least some of its blood was left, but there was nothing.

Han turned to Tiffany, unsure of what to say. After all, the corpse no longer existed, and they couldn’t exactly take a picture when they were too busy fighting it. Corpses of monsters tend to disappear after they died in this world. It didn’t even leave behind any drops or gold as a reward—there was essentially no evidence.

“Maybe it is a dream,” Tiffany sighed, leaning back against the grass. Han knew she still didn’t believe it despite her words. They exchanged glances and nodded, deciding not to push the matter any further.

The forest was truly terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> : (


	4. Hey, Our Healers Can Heal Now!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the healers can finally do something.

Sally didn’t know what to expect from her teammates anymore.

_ “Sally!” _ Tiffany yelled as she ducked and barely missed a swiping claw by a hair. “What are you doing?!”

“Enjoying the show,” the reaper deadpanned through the party chat. The corner of her mouth hooked upward as the dinosaur-looking monster stomped its foot and roared mid-chase, abandoning its current target in favour of going for a certain screeching sorceress. “Watch out for the tail, Janice.”

“Child, get down here and help us!” Janice fumbled with her disc before drawing a large circle in the air and firing a barrage of icicles at the monster chasing her. It violently launched itself sideways to avoid the attack and ducked its head, leaning forward to prepare to charge at her again. Another yell forced itself out of Janice’s throat. “What is this thing?!”

Cecilia fumbled with her stick and quickly hid behind Tiffany when Janice lured the dinosaur-monster too close. “Uh…” She tossed an attack spell at its face, only to sigh in defeat when it did zero damage. Peering at the reaper perched atop the small cliff looming over them, Cecilia yelled out, “A little help here?” 

Sally squinted. “I left for _ two minutes _,” she said, emphasising the last two words with a raise of her hand, “and Dat’s fooling around over there” —she pointed over to the group of Nagas surrounding Dat in the distance as he jumped between their legs, threw a few punches, and ran away before repeating— “Nic’s doing who knows what with those birds” —she moved her hand to point at Nic, who was spotted to be specifically sniping Pterodactyls-like monsters— “Han is nowhere to be found, and—this.” She finished by waving at the dinosaur standing below her, which roared as it tried to snap at Cecilia with its jaws. “What.”

“Tiff thought it would be a great idea to poke it while it was asleep,” Cece muttered not-quite spitefully. “Don’t blame me, I tried to stop her.”

“And Janice didn’t?” 

“To be fair, I told Janice she could practise attacking without trouble since there are two healers on her side now.” Tiffany paused. “That and get used to dodging.”

“Well, I can’t dodge!” Janice screeched in panic as the large teeth came dangerously close to her sleeve. She whacked its noise with her disc, successfully angering it more than anything else. _ “Kill it!” _

Jumping down, Sally took out one scythe in midair and cast the chain skill, successfully binding the dinosaur-creature to the ground as she landed lightly on her feet. It wriggled and violently chewed at the metal, but that only served to make the chains wrap tighter around its limbs. “Go kill it,” she said, lazily gesturing to it with one scythe.

Janice stood three metres away from the monster’s head and summoned a rain of fireballs, killing the dinosaur in a few hits. It screeched loudly and fell limply to the floor, twitching as it disintegrated into ashes that blew away with the wind. A small pile of gold appeared on the spot where the corpse originally lay.

“We just arrived here and everyone’s already splitting up?” Sally asked. Since everyone’s inventory would fill up at this rate, they had all designated Sally (by random draw) to bring their things to the banker to deposit into the guild bank. She didn’t expect that after everyone left without her to start early instead of wasting time, the party would already be split up by the time she came back. 

“Dat said it would be a good idea to spread out first to maximise our XP farming. There’s like six people, so we don’t need to waste time trying to kill one thing together,” Cecilia said. “We were gonna meet up when you get back to go over some things, though.”

“Is that why your sticks keep glowing?” Sally pointed to the scepter-like stick in Tiffany’s hands and the steel staff hung across Cecilia’s back. From the moment she returned to now, they had been glowing non-stop.

Janice shielded her eyes as the glow flashed even brighter for a few seconds. “It’s evolving, right?”

Cecilia opened up her skill tree. “It says I’m level nine now.”

“Well, Sally’s back. We better call them.” Tiffany turned to look at Dat, who was now busy with a new group of snake-headed beasts, and yelled through the party chat, “Sally’s back! Everyone get over here!”

Immediately after, a thunderous boom followed by several smaller echoes of the sound drew their attention to where Dat stood. On the ground where the snake-headed beasts previously stood now had a large crater, almost as deep as his height, and the thick cluster of dark particles fluttering around the tank indicated he had killed them all before a full minute could pass. “Wow,” Cecilia muttered, staring at her evolving stick. “I could never.”

“Everyone can kill those faster than me once they learn to do everything properly,” Dat responded as he approached the three. “Those were just weak. That one was a B rank monster.”

Cecilia peered over his powerfists and asked, “Where are Han and Nic?”

“Here,” a clear voice responded in her head.

Turning around, Cecilia spotted Han running towards them. Her swords were equipped in both hands, still glowing a faint blue from the residue magic of her skills. She appeared slightly out of breath but seemed otherwise unscathed. “Where were you?” the mystic asked.

“I was figuring out how to do my spin move over there.” Han pointed straight at the bottom of the cliff Sally had stood on minutes before. “Uh, not inside the cliff. Past that. And then a little further.”

“I don’t see Nic anywhere.” Janice squinted around to look for the archer, and as she turned to look behind her, she jumped when his face appeared in her vision. “When did you get here?”

“Just now,” Nic replied. “What happened?”

“Sally’s back, so we’re going over everything.” Dat looked around before leading the group towards the large camp beside them. “Let’s go there first in case those things respawn again.”

They all gathered around in a circle and sat down on the dead grass as soon as they entered the campgrounds. Standing off to the side were three other people that did not give them a second glance as they continued to talk amongst themselves. The titles on a badge pinned to their clothes—banker, merchant, and trader—matched the small buildings they stood in front of respectively.

“I stopped by a library and did some reading when we were still shopping at Ruta Village,” Dat said. “There’re a bunch of classes we haven’t met yet, but I’ll go over the ones for the people here.

“Classes are basically your role as an adventurer. It determines your type of weapon, armour, and position in a party. There are three roles here, the holy trinity: tank, healer, and DPS, which means _ damage per second _. Tanks are meatshields that absorb damage, DPS focus on attacking, and healers keep everyone alive. Does everyone understand?”

Cue nods from five heads.

Dat gestured for the healers to step forwards, and with a wave of his hand, had them brandish their sticks. “These two healers—mystic and summoner—have little armour, low defense and attack, but high magic, so their magic skills will be more powerful than everyone else’s. Their speeds are also high since they need to dodge a lot. Those traits are shared by all healers—this part is where it gets different. 

“Mystics are pure healers and can’t do any damage. Their heal spells are more powerful than a summoner’s and generally are preferred in most parties. The cooldowns are shorter too. As for Tiff, she’s some kind of a DPS-heal hybrid. Summoners have higher attack stats than mystics, but their healing is lower. She can summon things to assist her in healing and attacking.”

“My summons are still locked, though,” Tiffany added. “I need to hit level 120 for both to be unlocked. They grow with my gear, I think.”

“We’ll work on figuring that out later when you guys unlock everything. Where are my ranged people?” Dat’s attention fell on Janice. “Sorcerers or sorceresses have insanely high magic but proportionally weak defense. That’s why you have like negative armor. Your speed is average, but you mainly rely on a mix of dodging and correctly-timed magic shields to prevent getting hit and dying. The small disc you have helps you gather your magic to cast spells.”

Janice frowned at her dress. “Is that why I lose like half my health when I get poked?”

“It wouldn’t be a problem if you dodge correctly.” Dat shrugged. “Nic’s archer class has a high attack, but his defense is almost as low as Janice, and everything else is about average. He should be able to increase his speed to shoot arrows faster, though.” Turning to Nic, Dat pulled out his own arrow. “Isn’t there a skill where you siphon magic off people?”

“I’ve only tried it for Janice,” Nic replied, “since she has the most magic. It worked surprisingly well.”

“Hey, you, leech,” Janice attempted to loom threateningly over the archer, but alas, he was too tall. She sat back down with a huff. “Don’t you have your own skills?”

Nic nodded. “It only accumulates the excess mana you exude until it’s enough for a spell. It shouldn’t harm anyone.”

“Han” —Dat pointed to the twin swords in Han’s hands— “relies on physical attack and speed, which is very high because of her class. Like Nic, she needs to constantly dodge and deal damage. Since her magic is low, most of it is used to enhance her attacks and other stats for maximum damage output. It’s not like she can’t use magic at all, but her pure magic skills wouldn’t do as much damage as her swords themselves.”

Upon reaching Sally, Dat paused for a moment. “Sally’s reaper class is a bit special.”

“Special?” Sally parroted. “How?”

“Your skills are somewhat vampiric. You can’t tell since the earlier fights didn’t cause you too much damage, but you gain some health after using specific skills.”

“I noticed it,” Cecilia said. “Earlier after Tiff revived her, I saw her health recovering a little sometimes, but I thought that was just Tiff healing.”

Dat waved his hand. “Her physical attack is very high too, and combined with her average magic, she’s able to cast a lot of skills for help. The only thing that’s concerning should be her low speed. Reapers have counterattack moves that leave them invincible for a few seconds if done right, and their vampiric skills keep them from dying too fast. If she slips up, there’s a chance she could get hit from being unable to dodge quickly.”

“Wow, gee, thanks for the pressure,” Sally snorted. Beside her, Cece looked up with a stiff expression.

“So she dies if we mess up?” Cece pointed to herself and Tiffany.

“She’ll have a higher chance of dying if she messes up and you don’t heal her fast enough,” Dat corrected, “but that shouldn’t be a problem if we learn to do things properly or run away if it gets too dangerous.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Han comforted with a smile. “Sally’s capable enough, and your healing will get stronger after leveling up.”

“What about you?” Janice asked Dat. “What does your class do?”

“My fighter class has high health and defense, but my speed and magic are low. I don’t need speed to dodge since I’m taking the attacks. I don’t need magic either—my main goal isn’t to do damage.”

“A meatshield,” the sorceress commented. “Cool beans.”

“Does everyone understand their classes now?” Dat asked the party. “We’re moving onto positions next.”

“We’re good,” the rest of the group chorused.

Instead of beginning a long explanation like he did for the classes, Dat headed towards an A rank monster and initiated a fight, causing the rest of the party to enter combat mode as well. “Wait, Dat, what’s happening?” Han asked, confusion clear in her voice as she drew her swords. She prepared to charge towards it and end the monster with one strike when Dat held up a hand.

“It’s better to show you than sit down and talk.” Dat equipped his weapons and let out a shrill yodel, immediately capturing the attention of the dinosaur-like monster. “DPS in the back. Attack its back while the tank keeps it busy in the front.” After a pause, he added, “Don’t kill it too fast—I still have some things to explain.” 

Immediately, Han and Sally were brandishing their weapons and unleashing a chain of weaker skills at the monster’s back. It did not even spare them a second glance as its attention focused on Dat. “You see the red circle below me?” he said through the party chat. “That’s the indicator for the person holding aggro—aggravating them—to grab the attention of the boss or whatever. If this circle appears under anyone else, you’re pulling it away from me, and I’ll have to pull it back. The skill I used just now was _ Distraction _, which immediately pulls the aggro of monsters within a 21 metre radius.”

“How will we pull aggro?” Sally asked. “If you’re keeping its attention, it shouldn’t suddenly focus on us, right?”

“If the tank dies or doesn’t pull enough with their skills, then the aggro will shift to the one doing the most damage. In some cases, it’ll go to the healer if they’re healing more than the damage output, but we won’t need to worry about that,” Dat replied. “Nic and Janice, attack from a good distance away behind Sally and Han. Don’t get too close, but don’t go too far either.”

“Like here?” Janice asked, taking a few steps back until she stood around seven metres away from the melee duo.

Nic nocked an arrow and fired from beside her. “Yes.”

“Tiff,” Dat called out, “you know where the healers go?”

“Yeah,” Tiffany replied back. “You want me to explain?”

“Sure.”

“Okay,” Tiffany’s voice filtered through everyone’s mind. “There are three positions—it’s mostly focused on where the healer is.” She moved Cecilia over so they were placed perpendicular to the monster, between Dat and the others. “This is the perpendicular position. It’s good for alternating your focus between the DPS and the tank. I prefer this one more than the other two.”

“Is it because you have access to both sides?” Cecilia asked.

“Yep. And this” —Tiffany moved until she was perpendicular to Dat instead, forming an L shape with Dat, the monster, and the DPS forming one line while the healers formed the other— “is for instances when the tank might absorb more damage than the DPS. I don’t like this one that much; it’s harder to heal the rest of the party.” She moved again until she was right behind the party, in between the melee and ranged teams. “This one’s just weird. It works sometimes, but it just sucks. You’ll have to dodge a lot.”

“You two can go on one side each,” Dat said. “Like a raid.” Just as he said the last word, he slammed his fist down onto the monster’s face and killed it with one hit, ending the battle in seconds. He and everyone had been using basic attacks to prolong the fight and learn, but seeing how there was nothing more to explain, he decided to end it quickly. “Next up are terms, but they’re pretty simple.

“Buffs are spells that affect you positively, like increasing stats or something. Debuffs are ailments that affect you negatively, like poison, decreased stats, and things that make you weaker. I’ve already explained aggro. Attacks that affect a wide area are called AOE—area of effect. It’s like Janice’s blizzard or Nic’s thunder rain skills.” Scratching his head, Dat turned to the party. “Is there anything else?”

Tiffany squinted. “BAMS...?”

Dat nodded in response. “Oh, right. The regular monsters like jalraks and those rabbits are usually called mobs. They’re the small stuff that shouldn’t require much effort to kill. For larger monsters that aren’t bosses, we call them BAMS.”

“What does it mean?” Cecilia asked. “Is it a short version of a name?”

“Big-ass monsters.”

“......”

Coughing, Tiffany added on, “I think there are dungeons here, but I’m not too sure about that.”

“Dungeons are specific places that have instances, which are specially generated copies of locations for parties and people going solo. Think of it as a board game. When you enter a dungeon, you begin an instance, which is the board game. When you complete the dungeon, you win, right? And then you reset the instance, which is like setting the board back to its initial blank state.”

“Ohh,” Janice said. “Confusing, but I get the gist of it.”

“It’ll be easier to understand when you actually do an instance, I think.” Tiffany turned to Dat after a moment of thinking. “Do you think dungeon mechanics apply here?”

“Probably not,” Dat said, “since we’ll need a guide or something, unless they sell guides here, that is.”

“Will you attempt to crash the trading market again, then?”

“Too much work.” Dat waved his hand and equipped his weapons again. “We’re already rich enough, so there’s no point.” Without another word, he rushed towards another A rank monster, attracting its attention immediately and engaging in combat. He spoke through the party chat, “Everyone spread out and kill monsters. Make sure you don’t go too far from Cece or Tiff, or else they won’t get the XP.”

“Just like that?” Han asked, once again unsheathing her twin swords. She jumped and slashed at the nearest monster—a poor A rank creature that didn’t even get the chance to see her before it died—and killed it within seconds. “Is that all we need to know?”

“It covers up pretty much everything we asked,” Sally replied. As she dealt with her own group of monsters a good distance away, everyone else eventually split into their own teams. Some were in a group, like the trio of Cecilia, Janice, and Tiffany, while others went solo and fearlessly tackled numerous monsters at once.

Dat grunted as a Naga slammed into him with more force than he’d expected. “We’ll meet up after Cece and Tiff reach level twenty to see how it’ll be without Frey’s Blessing.”

“Okay,” the rest of the party chorused.

——— 

Nic was crouching on a tree branch, hidden behind the curtain of leaves and aiming his bow at a wandering dinosaur-creature, when something crashed against the tree from behind him. With a surprised noise, he quickly jumped off and swiftly turned around, aiming the arrow at the mysterious force instead. The dinosaur he originally intended to shoot at saw him as well and charged forward. 

The unknown creature turned out to be a grelith, an S rank monster that had a stump for a head, two large, spiked, tails, legs almost twice its body length, and claws for arms. It raised its head and ran at him with speed almost rivaling Han, tail sweeping over the ground and unrooting several bushes as it tried to hit him. Nic dodged backward and fired an arrow covered with electric thunderbolts, stunning the grelith for a few seconds.

He took this moment as a chance to attack the dinosaur behind him. It had reached too close for him to fire, so right as it snapped at him with its jaws, he jumped up and stepped over its head as leverage, leaping into the air and firing an arrow right at its eye. The grelith recovered seconds after his shot with a shrill screech and leapt at him again.

This time, Nic had no way to dodge in midair, and he took the attack with a grunt as the grelith’s tail slammed against his side and sent him flying towards the wall of a low cliff. “Ugh—” The dinosaur’s horns were a mere breath away from his chest when he blocked the hit with his bow. The weapon itself was sturdier than he thought, he noted. His block was done instinctively, and the upper and lower limbs hardly moved as the dinosaur exerted more force to push him against the wall.

Seeing that the grelith was approaching him again, Nic dodged under the dinosaur and sprinted away to make some distance before firing again. The arrows duplicated into three as it soared in an arc through the air, hitting the dinosaur and killing it within seconds. Nic didn’t have a chance to rejoice as the grelith was suddenly standing before him, arms outstretched for a swipe.

Nic rolled on the ground and tried to put some more distance, but each time he nocked his arrow and aimed, the grelith was appearing in his face again, forcing him to retreat even further.

“Woah,” Han said when their backs nearly collided. “Nic? I thought you were fighting over there.” She pointed to the area below the cliff where he had been after slashing at her current opponent, which was the cliff a good dozen metres away.

“A grelith found me somehow,” he replied, automatically switching targets and shooting at the dragon Han was fighting. The warrior smoothly moved around him and blocked a blow from the grelith for him, effectively protecting them both and swapping places without trouble.

Blue flames left a scorch mark on the dead grass as Han twirled and made a deep cut on its tail. “I thought greliths only stayed on the east side.” Squinting at the area around her, she continued, “This is the north side.”

“Someone brought it here.” Thinking someone had inadvertently lured it here, he fired an ice arrow and froze the grelith, allowing Han to unleash a flurry of slashes and kill it. She twirled several times and left a trail of beautifully coloured flames as each slash left a burning gash on the monster. Nic prepared two more arrows—one coated in poison while the other was set aflame—and shot the dinosaur. The poison weakened it to the point of moving sluggishly, and the fire quickly spread and burned it to death.

Han picked up the drops and let out a long breath. Fighting monsters took more energy than she thought. “Who would… wait.” 

Nic followed her as she ran towards the east side of the island, where the healers and Janice were supposed to be. They barely travelled half of the distance before spotting a familiar trio. Nic couldn’t help but sigh. “Of course.”

“Should we help them?” Han asked concernedly. Her grip on her swords tightened as she prepared to intervene. “That’s… uh… kinda a lot.”

The archer gave a nod.

_ “What is this!” _ Tiffany screeched as she sidestepped a sword. The Naga’s many arms waved the short swords threateningly as it turned towards her to attack again. Alas, her running only served to make the situation worse, as the horde of Nagas and greliths followed her around the island. She ran into even more monsters on the way and successfully awakened them from their sleep, causing them to join the already large group of angry monsters.

Behind the group was Janice, who chased after the large horde and shot endless icicles, fireballs, thunderbolts, and other AOE spells in an attempt to reduce the numbers. When she accidentally pulled aggro, she immediately fled, leaving Cecilia to run around as she tried to help with her minuscule damage.

The mystic wasn’t doing as well either—she had her own group of monsters after her, but after accidentally running into Tiffany while blindly sprinting away, the groups fused into an even larger group, leaving both healers screaming as they ran for their lives. 

At the sight of Han and Nic, their eyes lit up. “Saviors!” Tiffany called out dramatically, making a beeline for the two without thought. “They won’t leave me alone! I am merely a level nineteen healer! _ I’m merely a level nineteen healer!! _”

Without a word, Nic fired an arrow into the sky and summoned a rain of arrows, cutting down the monsters by half. Han took care of the other half with her blade dance from earlier, leaping and spinning around as she slashed left and right. Above her, several swords materialised and rushed at the monsters she missed.

“Janice can kill these in one hit, right?” Nic tilted his head as he glanced at the pile of corpses. He didn’t bat an eye to the bright lights from the slain monsters that flew towards the healers’ weapons.

Cecilia pointed accusingly at Janice and declared, “She’s a weakling.”

“Hey!” Janice nudged her on the side. “They were just running too fast!”

“I saw you kill the ones in the back,” Han said, sheathing her swords and turning to Janice. She gestured to the sorceress's shoes and praised, “Impressive, with those heels you have.”

“I’m surprised they don’t hurt.” Janice lifted a foot to inspect her shoes properly. “It feels like I’m not even wearing heels at all.”

Cecilia seemed to want to say something when a line of words appeared in their vision. The letters appear one after another as if being typed, then flashed twice when the sentence was completed.

_ Adventurer _ ** _Cecilia_ ** _ [Mystic] and Adventurer _ ** _Tiffany_ ** _ [Summoner] have reached level twenty one. Frey’s Blessing will now become inactive. Revive spells will be removed from the skill tree. _

“Uh—” As the words slowly faded away, Sally spoke up in the party chat, “Did anyone else get the message just now?”

“We should gather,” Dat’s voice suggested. “They’re level twenty one now. We don’t know what will happen.”

“My bad,” Tiffany looked at them apologetically. “I ran into too many monsters.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Han turned towards the general direction of Dat’s voice and asked, “Where do we meet up?”

“The camp from earlier. Try not to fight any monsters on the way.”

“Got it.”

———

If one were to describe Dawn Island, the words _ beautiful _ and _ horrifying _ would come to mind. The place holds up to its name: it’s always dawn there, no matter what time of day it may be for other regions. Most of the island consisted of dead grass, trees that only had half of their leaves, and numerous cliffs both steep and short. At first, such a description would lead to people thinking of a deserted island, full of monsters and nothing else. However, that was where Dawn Island became uniquely distinct among other islands.

The remaining leaves of the trees still shone a gold colour, never falling, yet never growing. They swayed to the wind like regular leaves, bent like any other plant under human fingers, but as if permanently attached to the branches, they were impossible to break off.

Scattered around the island were small camps and buildings, save for the large gate at one end indicating the main camp location. Each camp, with its tall, magic barriers as protection, prevented monsters from wandering in, and they served as resting spots for tired adventurers that wanted to avoid aggravating monsters.

“This island’s pretty, but in a kinda sad way,” Tiffany commented as they all gathered in a nearby camp. It was located atop a cliff, giving access to a view of the entire island with a glance in any direction. “The scenery’s pretty, but it looks abandoned, and the monsters here make it even more sad looking.”

Sally’s eyes swept over the barren hills and cliffs, then past the cluster of golden trees in one particular area, and finally the muted green grass covering the ground, dead from the heavy dark magic produced from most of the monsters wandering around. “The sky’s nice. I’d draw it if I have the chance to.”

“Aesthetic,” Janice muttered, joining Sally on her sky-gazing endeavors.

“So,” Dat said, garnering everyone’s attention with a simple word, “we need to figure out what’s different after the blessing disappeared. Does anyone remember the specific effects?”

Cecilia squinted at her skill tree as if it would help her any more. “It gave us a revive spell and went ‘pain go away,’ I think.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Tiffany confirmed. “I remember thinking what if I stubbed my toe and it hurt.”

Dat hummed, eyes wandering all over the place. “Should we test the extent of pain we feel?”

“Why would we do that?” Janice’s eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t want to feel pain.”

Dats stared at the sorceress with a blank look. “I mean, it’s not like we’d die from a simple scratch.”

“Who’s the test subject?” Sally asked. “I’m not willing.”

“I’ll do it, since I proposed the idea.” Dat turned to the healers and stared at expressionlessly. His mouth suddenly curved into an ominous smile. “I won’t die, but do try to keep me alive.”

Cecilia gave a quick nod, while Tiffany dabbed.

With a loud, echoing yodel, Dat moved away from the barrier’s border and attracted a B rank monster. Unlike the last hour, he did not deliver any blows with killing intent, but rather stood there and took damage. He didn’t flinch as a claw came down at his face, creating a shallow cut on his cheek. “Okay, ow, that hurt,” he muttered, quickly moving away. He let the following attack hit his leg, only to hiss as pain invaded his nerves. Actual blood dripped from the wounds and stained his shirt and pants, a great contrast to their painless, unscathed states while under the blessing.

Although his health bar had only dropped by 0.7 percent, Cecilia and Tiffany still sent a heal spell his way, mending his cuts in seconds. The blood remained on his clothes, staining it a dark red.

“Was it that bad?” Han asked worriedly. She wasn’t sure how to feel about this sudden revelation.

“The first one felt like a paper cut,” Dat rubbed over his cheek with one hand absentmindedly. The cut was gone, but he could still feel the phantom sting. “The second one was deep enough to cut through a musc—” He paused. “Actually, nevermind. I’m guessing our pain sensitivity is reduced by around 60 percent, but it’s still better if we avoid directly taking attacks.”

Nic looked at his stained clothing and frowned. “If our clothes can become damaged, what about our weapons?”

“I guess we’ll have to figure that out later.” Upon noticing everyone’s uneasy looks, Dat added, “I mean, this makes things more realistic, I guess. If we just went through everything without feeling pain, we’d be cheating life. I doubt we’d die with the skills from our other selves.

“I’m glad I bought this too.” He took out a second copy of his current outfit and held it up. “This outfit’s too good, so I bought two and refined one in case something like this might happen. I’ll equip it later, I guess.” Gesturing to his blood-stained clothes, he added, “Better to fight and ruin these more than a new set.”

“I’m not too worried,” Sally said. “I’ll just have to be more cautious. Most of my skills say I won’t take damage if I do it properly.”

“Is everyone still okay with splitting up to grind for XP?” Dat gestured to the healers. “It would be better if we quickly level them up. That way they can heal better.”

“I have a pain-reducing skill at around level 72,” Tiffany said. “It has a long cooldown, but it essentially allows everyone to experience ten percent of the pain.”

Cecilia scrolled through her own skill tree as well. “I have one too. It unlocks at level 60.”

“Will you be okay, Janice?” Dat asked the sorceress. “You have the lowest defense out of all of us.”

“I have the dodge skill,” Janice replied confidently. “Worse comes to worst, I’ll just run away.”

Dat gave a nod. “Good. Everyone, kill as many as you can. With the rate we kill things, it should take about half a day—maybe even less if we have good work ethic.”

“I’ll, uh, run around, I guess. I can’t really kill much, so might as well help with the pain thing now.” Tiffany glanced at Cecilia. “Wanna join me?”

“Sure.”

As they were about to split up, Dat stopped them with a wave of his hand. “Wait.”

“Yeah?” Tiffany answered.

“What about everyone’s mana? After the blessing disappears, we won’t have unlimited mana anymore either.”

Janice’s countenance took on a disgruntled look. “Limited mana? But all of my skills require a lot. They take up like this big chunk.” To make a point, she held up her hands and made an estimated guess to compare.

Pulling up his own stats, Dat cast a random skill and watched a chunk of the blue bar decrease before slowly filling up in small increments. “Since sorcerers rely on mana for everything, I’m pretty sure it’ll replenish at a faster rate. It’s just that our rotations are consuming more than it’s replenishing.”

“Then how will we fix the problem?” Han asked. “If we don’t use mana, wouldn’t everything we learned become useless?”

“Maybe there’s a way to increase the regeneration rate,” Sally suggested, but she wasn’t too sure and looked at Dat for an explanation.

Instead of explaining, the tank turned to the party’s healers. “You two got anything?”

“I have three mana regen spells at level 37, 82, and 102.” Tiffany beckoned over Cecilia and asked, “Can you check your skill tree for any mana replenishing skills?”

“Yeah.” After a moment of searching, Cecilia announced rather indifferently, “I have two that unlock at level 24 and 73.”

“Good thing I bought these potions in advance, then.” Dat opened up his bag and pulled out a pack of potions from his inventory. He handed each party member a bottle before instructing them to read the description first.

_ [Enhancing Battle Elixir] Provides the following effects: increases attack and magic by 25%, increases defense by 20%, increases healing [for healers] by 7%, decreases cooldown of all skills by 17%, restores 15% of MP every five seconds. Effects last one day. _

“Where’d you find these potions?” Sally asked as she typed the word _ elixir _ into the Hal Slate. The _ potions _ category popped up, and after scrolling for a bit she found the one Dat gave them in an instant. “These are… _ fifty gold each?? _”

_ “Fifty gold??” _Tiffany’s jaw dropped. “That’s... Woah... so much...”

“It’s not a lot considering how rich we are,” Dat pointed out. “It’s worth a good price too.”

“I don’t understand the concept of money here,” Janice said, looming over Sally’s shoulder to look at the slate. “Is fifty gold a lot or something?”

Dat shrugged. “Even if it is, we still need it. Our goal is to help Cece and Tiff reach max level as fast as possible, so we might as well spend some money instead of wasting time grinding just cus we keep running out of mana.”

“Good point.” Han read the potion’s description again. “Is this because they don’t have those mana skills yet, so we’re relying on the potion to keep our mana full?”

“Yes. We won’t have to worry about burning gold once they can replenish mana for free. After today, we probably still might need it for bosses and dungeons if we come across any, but that’s not our current concern.” With a nod, Dat glanced over everyone. “Ready?”

“Affirmative,” Tiffany deadpanned. The party promptly split up after that, each forming their own groups or going solo again. This time, they stayed closer to each other, allowing for the healers to pick up their combat styles while testing out their new skills each time they leveled up.

Amazingly, everyone’s damage output increased. Their avoidance and fear of pain caused them to become more vigilant and more intent on killing monsters before they could even attack back.

———

At level 120, a great discovery was made.

As per Dat’s calculations, it really took them around half a day, though the sky was still at its constant state of dawn. Everyone gathered atop a steep cliff far away from monster spawns. Since they had all been fighting separately, they needed to know the capabilities of their healers first. 

“How does it feel to be not-useless now?” Tiffany asked her fellow healer, clutching her stick in excitement. At this point, it no longer looked like a stick and instead resembled a scepter of sorts. Simple swirls ran down the handle until stopping three-quarters up. A small, raindrop shaped jewel decorated the tip, reflecting the dim sunlight with sparkles. “This looks cool.”

Cecilia’s staff was more on the metallic side, almost reaching Janice’s height, and several small, clear jewels decorated the base. At the tip was a jewel shaped almost like a dagger. “Can I stab people with this?” She inquired, holding it like one would a lance and making stabbing motions. In the midst of her waving around, the jewel sliced the belly of a stray bat that happened to pass by and killed it in one hit.

_ [Cecilia] dealt 5 damage to Bat (lv. 1) _

Everyone: “...”

Cecilia smiled. “Cool.”

“What skills did you learn?” Sally asked, successfully pulling their attention from the weapon designs to their original intention. “I saw a large circle on the ground below me when I fought some Nagas. It looked like it came from Cece.”

“I learned a cleansing spell. My standard healing spell is more powerful now. I can heal, like, 40 percent of Dat’s health in one go. The skill tree a lot of buff and debuff skills here. Most of these are healing spells.” Cecilia squinted through her skill tree, hoping to find any attack spell, but the only one she found was her basic attack that unlocked at level one. “No attack spells.”

Tiffany opened her skill tree as well. “I have some buff-debuff spells, but they’re not as effective as Cece’s. My healing isn’t as powerful either. There’s” —she squinted— “a few attack spells here, but I’ll have to look through them later. Y'all see what Cece has while I read this list.” She didn’t wait for an answer before walking to the side to sit on the grass. Her eyes quickly flickered left and right as she read through the skills.

“There’s this cool healing circle that forms around me.” Cecilia raised her staff, and the jewel glowed as a white circle with a 12 metre radius formed around her. Although everyone’s health was at full, they could still see the rapidly flashing series of green numbers appear next to their maximum health numbers, never healing below 40 thousand. “It lasts for four seconds, but I can pretty much heal 80 percent of your health if you stand in it the entire time.”

“Are your other spells just like this?” Han stared in awe as Cecilia summoned another healing spell. This time, it was a smaller circle—almost half the size of her first skill—but the healing speed was noticeably faster compared to the first spell. “Wow, ultimate healer.”

“Sad, you can’t join us in running around, I guess,” Sally sighed. “Healing sounds fun, though.”

“There should be a…” One particular skill caught the mystic’s eyes as she skimmed over her skill tree. “What’s this?” Casting the spell _ Thaumaturgy, _which had no description just like her call skill, she found that she could only use it on party members. “Janice, I’m borrowing you for a bit.”

Janice gawked. “You’re making _ me _ your _ guinea pig _?”

“I mean, she’s a healer that can’t do much damage,” Dat said, waving his hand dismissively. “You won’t die.”

“Okay, fair point—” Janice didn’t get to finish as an unknown force pulled her towards the healer almost at the speed of light. She blinked, still feeling somewhat dizzy from moving through metres of space in the span of one second. “...What?”

Cecilia pointed her staff at Dat, who was standing furthest away from her, and used the skill again. This time, Dat ended up standing next to her instead of Janice, who had fallen after the fighter crashed against her once the skill’s effects ended. Dat looked at Janice. “Wee.”

“Oooh, what skill is that?” Han’s eyes sparkled as she continued, “Can you make us fly?”

“Uhh, it doesn’t have a description for the skill.” Taking another look, Cecilia suddenly paused. “Wait, I’m Jared. It’s right there but I just didn’t open it.”

In the back, a quiet, “Fool,” was heard from a certain sorceress.

Cecilia ignored her as she read aloud, “_Thaumaturgy: pull party members within a 21 metre radius to you. Targets will not be affected by any attacks during the pull, and the speed of the pull can be changed accordingly up to 50 percent of the initial speed. Skill can be used up to five times per charge. Cooldown is one minute. Tip: can be used for when Divine Shield is unavailable. _Divine Shield?”

“I just had an image of everyone yeeting all over the place as Cece runs around,” Tiffany said. “Terrifying.”

“Horrible,” said Janice.

“I can do that,” said Cecilia, and before anyone had a chance to say anything, she lifted her staff, pointed it towards Dat, and violently swung it in a large arc, sending the tank flying into the air. He disappeared into the distance with a yodel before reappearing and landing back on his feet like a cat.

Han’s eyebrow slowly raised. “You get a shield too? Wow, OP,” she said in awe, as if the previous few seconds had never happened.

“What’s the shield’s description?” Dat waved his arms as Janice nearly kicked him while trying to get back up. “We might need to learn each other’s skills—especially the healers—in case we mess up.”

“It protects everyone by absorbing 50 thousand damage taken within 12 seconds of activation,” Cece replied, “and the cooldown is three minutes.”

“We can save that for nukes from bosses,” Dat nodded. “Maybe Tiff has something similar too.”

“What’s she doing anyway? It shouldn't take that long to—”

Tiffany screeched.

Everyone: “...”

“I finally got my summons!” she yelled, eyes practically circles like an owl’s as she waved her weapon rather aggressively. “I’ve been waiting 120 levels for this!!”

With a more controlled wave of her scepter, a gold circle drew itself over the grass, and from the center appeared a small, round… thing. It was about the size of an average person’s torso, and a pair of stubby legs held its spherical body up. A singular, round horn sat at the top of its head. It had no face.

The summoner’s excitement died instantly at the sight of the plain creature.

“What’s that?” Dat asked. He moved over to poke at its face, or at least what he thought was its face. “This thing’s ugly.”

Tiffany gave an offended gasp. “I finally get my defense summon, and this is how you treat it?” Gesturing the little creature over, she pat around the area not occupied by the horn. “For a defense summon, this is kinda… underwhelming.”

“Does it have sentience?” Sally stared at the defense summon’s unmoving figure. It didn’t react as Dat poked it once again, this time with the tip of his boot. The little thing fell backwards and kicked its legs like a turtle when flipped over. It took a full twenty seconds to stand back up, waddling over to its summoner obediently.

“I don’t think so…?” Tiffany squinted. She took a few steps away from the group and watched the summon follow her. “It just, like, follows me around. The summon lasts a few minutes.”

“What does it do?” Han asked, attempting to scoop it up like a small animal. However, unlike a small animal, it stayed still in her arms. “It’s so cute.”

“Uhh…” Looking at her skills, the summoner muttered, “Apparently it pulls aggro and can absorb damage for me on command. Like I can direct it to stand in front of me and take damage. There’s a skill to transfer the aggro pulled to someone else. Basically it’s another meatshield.” A stats box appeared in front of her, and the summoner’s eyes lit up. “Ooohh, it has some high defense and HP.”

“Can Cece yeet your summon?” Sally asked, wandering over to the small yellow thing.

“I can try?” Waving her staff the same way she did earlier—only with gentler movements this time—Cecilia pointed it upward with the intent to make the summon float. What she didn’t expect, however, was for the summon to shoot up into the sky like a rocket.

Tiffany squinted into the sky when it didn’t fall back down after a whole minute. She glanced at the summon’s stats again, but the health bar was greyed out. “I think you killed my summon.”

“No you.”

Seconds passed, and the summon reappeared from the circle. Tiffany stared at it. “Oh.”

Janice wandered over to Han, who had picked up the summon again, and ran her hand over its… face? It felt almost like a smooth rock. “Does it have any other skills? Like spellcasting?”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Tiffany said. “It has zero magic attributes, but it _ can _ attack stuff. I don’t think it’ll do too much damage, though, and I’m not even sure how it’ll attack anything.” Before she could say anything else, the creature disappeared with a flash of light, and she stared sadly at the empty space it previously occupied. “Oh... I have to wait ten minutes again.”

“For a summoner, you have very little summoning skills,” Nic paused. “Summons?”

“I have one more,” Tiffany replied. Waving her scepter once again, a similar circle to the one before appeared on the grass in the same manner. Only, this circle gave off a light green hue, and with a soft glow of light, another small creature emerged from the center.

This summon looked more like a small rabbit with round, floppy ears, and it floated at shoulder height. Unlike the previous one, it let out a small chirping noise before looking around for something. Its ears drooped when it didn’t find what it was looking for. 

Tiffany gasped exaggeratedly. “This one’s cute!” she exclaimed, and her extinguished enthusiasm from earlier re-lit itself as she jumped around it. “It has _ ears _ and _ a tail! _”

Han and Janice cooed at it and stepped forward in an attempt to pet the little thing. To their dismay, the creature circled once around Tiffany’s head, shot her an unamused look, and disappeared in a similar manner to the first summon.

Janice made a noise of disappointment. “That one was so cute,” she said, voice pitched higher than usual. “What was it?”

“Fluffy,” Han added. “I wanted to touch the floof.”

“That was my, uhh, attack summon. Unlike the defense summon earlier, it has a high attack and low-ish defense. Too bad it only lasts 20 seconds.” Tiffany sighed. “Why are my only summons so short-lived?”

“Is that why it gave you a look?” Sally asked. “Because it couldn’t find anything to attack?” After a second thought, she noted, “That one had some sentience.”

Tiffany shrugged. “I mean, I’ll summon them again at some point, but using them only for fighting is plain sad.”

“Is that all the important skills you learned?” Dat pulled up everyone’s stats from the party menu and looked through them again. “What about the mana skills?”

“Tiff and I somehow learned to use it when we hit around level 110,” Cecilia said. “It’s pretty easy to use. I can replenish up to 80 percent total of everyone’s mana every two minutes. Tiff can go up to 60 percent every five minutes—these are if we stack all the mana skills together.”

“We’ll rely on you to manage our health and mana,” Dat said. “Dodge skills don’t cost any mana, but everything else does to some extent, so remember not to focus too much on one stat.”

“Yeet.”

“Okay.”

Cecilia and Tiffany both made eye contact at the same time. Under everyone’s confused watch, they shared a nod.

Suddenly, the two healers were teleporting all over the place with a five-second pause between each teleport. Janice blinked at them, unable to form any words as the healers wandered farther away. For some reason, Nic joined them, except instead of teleporting it was his dodge skill, which moved him farther away but had a longer cooldown of twelve seconds. When he couldn’t catch up, he walked the remaining distance while waiting for the skill to get off cooldown.

Dat looked at Sally, who stared back blankly. 

“Wow,” said Han. “They can dodge almost anything with that speed.”

“According to something I read or whatever,” Dat started, “All classes have at least one dodge skill. Specifically, it means every class except the healers have more than one, which is why their teleport has such a short cooldown. Otherwise they’d go splat.”

“Should—” Janice turned back to the healers in the distance—who were running away from a Naga after accidentally teleporting against them—and Nic, who chased the monster while firing arrows at it. “Should we leave them?”

“Let’s go back to Katherine first,” Sally suggested. “We still need a way to get back to our world.”

“Oh, right.” Janice dragged out the last word. With all the chaotic shenanigans, she’d forgotten their original purpose. “Yeah, we should go back.”

When someone—it was either Cecilia or Tiffany, but no one could tell—let out a shriek as more monsters joined in to create another horde, no one paid them any attention. Nic ended up being their savior who killed everything with his amazing arrow skills.


	5. Holiday Extra 1 - Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Santa asks Theology for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *squints at word count* I feel Dead.

“You’re telling me,” Tiffany started, “you’re_ Santa _??”

The party named Theology stared at the short, skinny man standing before them, reaching almost half the height of their shortest teammate. Donned in an ensemble of red and white with a shaggy, straight white beard, _ Santa _ huffed indignantly. “Well excuse you,” he said almost flippantly. His voice was pitched higher than they had expected, almost nasally like those cartoon characters in shows. When it was visibly obvious he realised he wasn’t keeping up his kind facade, his expression quickly morphed back into a smile. “I mean, yes, I am.”

“But—” Han made a circular motion over her stomach with both her arms, distress clearly written across her face. “What happened to your iconic stomach? The ‘hoh hoh hoh’ laugh? The _ beard _???”

Santa snorted. “I’ve never shown my face in the past few millennia. What makes you think they’ll know what I look like?”

Han opened her mouth to retort, but after finding nothing to say, she closed it back like that one internet meme. “...You right.”

“What brought the famous Santa to our guild headquarters two days before Christmas, then?” Katherine asked, cutting straight to business as always. “We’re sorta closed for the week.” She gestured to the closed doors behind her as Theology gathered around her sides in a semi-circle of sorts, almost like guardians watching over their gates.

According to Dracheheim traditions, the guild would be officially closed every Christmas for adventurers to go back and visit their families. Of course, the buildings were still open for those without families or homes, since the top floor of the headquarters was, after all, Theology’s official dorm. Guild members would still be able to take and turn in missions; it was just that everyone could take an optional break during the one week of peace.

It was just that they didn’t expect for a large sleigh to land before them right as they stepped out to shop for some more food—extravagant sparkles and bells and all—and they certainly didn’t expect for some short man calling himself Santa to ask for help. In the end, they invited him anyway; if this man and his unnamed assistant were burglars, they’d have no problem defending the place— 

—which led to their current situation. 

Gathered around the main lobby were the eight Theology officials, Santa himself, a tall elf—who even towered over Nic—and a sleigh without any reindeer. Well, they had to move the sleigh outside after it took up half of the space and left for no sitting room. The warm fire and tightly shut entrance doors did an excellent job in keeping them warm.

Santa turned to the elf man and looked at him expectantly. When the elf replied with a confused look, the bearded man firmly gestured to Theology and shook his head. “Go tell them.”

“We were preparing the presents for the kids, as we do every year,” the elf said, but not before shooting Santa a disappointed look. His voice was surprisingly deep compared to his delicate looks. “The packaging elves had already wrapped them up, so we only needed to send the packages to the delivery elves before Christmas arrives.”

“Hold up.” Janice held her hand in the air to interrupt and turned to Santa, one eyebrow raised. “You don’t deliver the gifts yourself?”

Miffed, Santa frowned, arms crossing over his chest as he squinted up at the sorceress. “You expect me to somehow be everywhere around the world at exactly midnight? Of course I’d need people to deliver them.”

“Do you pay them?” Nic asked.

The stare the elf gave in return was enough to explain everything.

“This is illegal!” Tiffany gasped, pointing an accusing finger at the allegedly kind and benevolent Santa. “I would say child labor, but they’re not those short people like I thought.”

“Never mind that,” Santa snapped, stomping his foot indignantly. After realising he had lost his composure, he quickly coughed into his hand and reverted to a straight face. He shot a glare at the elf beside him and hissed out through clenched teeth, “Continue.”

“I don’t get paid enough for this,” the elf muttered, and upon the nearly murderous look he received, he ignored the pitying looks from Theology and continued indifferently, “The Grinch stole everything halfway through the delivery. He kidnapped Rudolf during his escape too.”

“Santa pays his workers minimum wage confirmed,” Tiffany whispered. Beside her, Cecilia nodded solemnly.

“They probably have no time to pee either.”

Both went ignored as Santa purposely changed the topic and fell into a deep discussion with Dat about the details of the mission. Katherine was already going behind the counter to fill out a mission form for Santa. Sally, Han, Janice, and Nic took this chance to look through the window and admire the shiny red sleigh outside.

“So you want us to retrieve the presents and save Rudolf,” Dat confirmed, calling back the rest when the details were confirmed. “Is there anything else?”

“The Grinch lives on the snowy mountains of the far south. I’m willing to give you a set of clothes that can withstand the freezing temperatures.” Taking out a large red sack from out of nowhere, Santa rummaged through the bag that was two times too large and finally pulled out a wrapped box, decorated with a singular red ribbon over the mess of green and white paper. “Here, take this,” he said, handing it to Dat. “It should temporarily give you a skill and strength enhancing buff.”

Dat took the box and handed it to Sally, who placed it inside her pouch next to the Hal Slate. “Is the Grinch that tough?”

“An annoying one, he is,” Santa spat. He didn’t bother to conceal his obvious distaste as he shook his fist at no one in particular. “Trying to ruin my job every year. It’s like he has nothing else to do.”

When the ringing of a bell continuously echoed in the room, everyone looked around to find the source, but both Santa and the elf suddenly stood up. “The reindeer are calling,” the bearded man sighed, climbing back up his sleigh after unceremoniously kicking open the doors. “Comet probably broke something again.”

Gesturing to the empty space where the reins would usually be hooked up, Cecilia pointed out, “Wait, don’t you travel with your reindeer?”

“Is it because Rudolf is missing?” Han guessed. If she remembered correctly, it was Rudolf’s nose that allowed them to navigate through places. “You need his nose for light, right?”

“They’re just dumb, lazy deer.” Santa waved a dismissive hand. “Can barely go for an hour before they have to rest. Even flying with magic is easier.” As if to make a point, the sleigh levitated around a foot into the air with a flick of his wrist. “If it weren’t for them, I’d be going to save Rudolf now.”

“But Rudolf is their most important teammate,” Janice said. “How could they not help?”

“Bah!” Santa slapped his leg with a hand as if the sorceress had just told a funny joke. “Those reindeer are _ fake _ —still believe I didn’t know about their bullying before I added Rudolf into the team. After I praised him they all went ‘oh, Rudolf, your nose is so cool!’ like they didn’t subject him to years of verbal abuse. _ Fake _. They think they’re elites since I make them work more than the other reindeer.” 

The elf took a deep breath and sighed into his hand. He turned towards the floating sleigh. “We should go before they act up again.”

Santa blinked. “Good point,” he said, before turning back to look at Theology. “Save Rudolf and the presents and I’ll give you a reward. I’d offer one of the reindeer, but I still need them for whatever crap they do. Bye.” With that, he lifted his hand and directed the sleigh to shoot towards the sky, leaving behind twin contrails and a large red bag on the floor, which presumably contained their outfits for the far south.

Nic looked at his party members, who were all staring at the spot where Santa’s sleigh disappeared into the distance.

Then he looked behind him.

Then he looked at the party again.

Then he looked again at the elf who was still staring as well.

The two made eye contact.

“...”

“...”

It was then that Han turned back and saw who Nic was holding an unofficial staring contest with. Her eyes slowly widened at the sight, and she alternated between gesturing to the sky and the elf confusedly. “...”

“I can’t believe he just left you,” Tiffany’s voice interrupted. She was watching the three stare at each other with owlish eyes with the straightest face possible. The rest of Theology who were unaware turned back to see the elf who was still there. 

“...”

“It’s fine,” the elf sighed, lifting a hand towards his forehead. “He’ll send a reindeer for me soon.”

Soon ended up being hours later when the day nearly ended.

———

“These clothes are comfy,” Han said, pulling the fuzzy hood over her head. “Warm. Floofy.”

The clothes Santa left behind turned out to be the Snowquill set, which was a four piece set of clothing personally made by the elves living in the far south for those who would not withstand the cold the way they could. The magical properties imbued allowed the clothes to hold its own against wind, hail, snow, and water to a certain amount. It also nullified any cold effects and seemed to be able to adapt to any class.

“Fuzzy,” Janice murmured, snuggling into the fluffy collar of her dress. “I like how I can wear a dress and still not feel cold.”

“I’m amazed how they’re tailored to our classes,” Sally said, pulling on her own Snowquill clothes that resembled her usual gear. Other than the extra fur and thicker layers, it looked almost exactly the same, except the colours were now a warm mix of muted coffee brown, snowy white, pale red, and small hints of pale yellow.

“Everyone’s boots look the same, though,” Cecilia pointed out, lifting her foot to inspect the outsole. “These spikes look dangerous.”

“On top of helping with walking on snow, they can even serve as weapons.” Tiffany nodded approvingly, taking a few tentative steps around the group in a circle. “I approve.”

“How is it over there?” Katherine asked through the ongoing call, her face positioned somewhat below the screen as she bent down to pick up something. “Hold on, Albus dropped something just now.”

Off screen, the cat meowed before he jumped onto the table and sat there, unmoving. The ugly hot pink cat sweater made his fur stand out in all directions as the neon green stripes and black polka dots ran in zigzags across the fabric in a clash of horrible colours. Katherine disappeared from view after making a disgusted expression at whatever it was that the cat dropped. She appeared not long after and gently pushed him aside to see everyone on her screen. “It was a dead bird,” she sighed. “Well that was gross.”

“We’ve reached the snowy mountains after two hours of travel via pegasus,” Nic informed. The onslaught of snow and cold wind mercilessly attacked his face, but the effects of the Snowquill outfit made it feel like nothing. “These clothes are effective.”

“Pegasus rides are wild,” Han commented excitedly. Her mind flashed back to the rush of wind past blowing her face as the horse-bird hybrids soared in the air. “Lots of flapping. And neighing.”

Katherine leaned forward, squinting at the blurry background as she tried to make out shapes past the blur of white. “Are you near where the Grinch is?”

“Not quite,” Sally said. “We still have to travel up the mountain and enter his town.”

“We saw monsters on the way here too,” Han added. “Large, uh, polar bears. At least, I think they were polar bears.”

“Do you think they have penguins here?” Cecilia asked, looking around. When a particularly large ball of hail hit her in the face, she shook the snow off in mild surprise. 

“Probably,” Katherine replied as she quickly read through something below the screen. “It’s this world’s equivalent of the South Pole. There might be other creatures like those in Antarctica.”

A large, furry paw blocked the right side of the screen as Katherine tried to talk over the incessant meowing. “According to the news Santa sent, Rudolf should be kept in the Grinch’s town building, where he likes to put the stolen presents.” A pause. “Well, the ones he managed to steal in the past years.”

At this point, the group was already nearing the base of the mountain. They decided to hide behind some random large boulders for shelter in case any roaming monsters wanted to attack them. “We’re near the mountain,” Dat informed, peering past the boulders with the Hal Slate held over his eyes in hopes of seeing through the snow. His efforts yielded no results, so he used the vaguely accurate GPS system instead. “I think we should use the buff Santa gave us after we start ascending the mountain.”

“Why not now?”

“He only said it would buff us temporarily, but he didn’t specify how long. The monsters we encounter on the mountain might be stronger than we think.”

“Good choice,” Katherine replied, nodding. “I’m not too well-informed of the monsters there either. Not many people go to the far south since it’s the Grinch’s territory, so there’s very little info in the archives.”

“Is Albus good?” Janice asked concernedly when the cat came into view again and had a particularly violent seizure. He made a hacking sound and spat out a huge fur ball that nearly landed on Katherine’s face, much to the archiver’s disgust. Then he collapsed on his side and twitched for a few seconds, eyes closed and unmoving. “He looks… uh…”

Tiffany shook her head. “Sis be dying.” A pause. “Or bro,” she corrected.

The seizure ended as soon as it started. Albus’s eyes suddenly snapped open, revealing a brilliant, white glow. He slowly floated into the air and radiated a blinding light. “Woah, what—” Katherine’s voice turned static as the screen fell apart. “Albus, wha—”

The call cut off.

Cecilia attempted another call with Katherine, but she received no response. She tried again with a call scroll, only to yield the same result. After a few more failed calls, the healer turned to the party helplessly. “Is she…?”

“My cat got possessed,” Sally said blankly. “I finally figured a way to summon him from our original world, and now he’s somehow possessed?” She frowned, staring at the snowy floor thoughtfully. “Did I do the ritual wrong?”

“_ That _ was how you got him here??” Janice spluttered, arms flailing everywhere as she stared at Sally accusingly. “You told me you found him and figured he somehow got transported here like we did.”

“What.” Cecilia blinked several times. “I was told he originally came here with us, but she was just hiding him in her inventory.”

“Okay, that one doesn’t make much sense,” Tiffany said, turning to the two in semi-disbelief. “I was told he was just a replacement cus she felt lonely.”

“...”

“...”

Sally hurriedly shushed them. “To be fair, I _ did _ summon him because it was lonely and then stored him in my inventory for a while before telling Janice.”

Han, on the other hand, gasped as if the reaper had committed a great crime. “You had your cat and didn’t even tell me??”

“It was from a book I found in the guild library,” Sally explained, “but the summoning spell looked fishy, so I needed to see if there were any aftereffects first just in case.”

Dat was quick to step in and interrupt them. “We can discuss the cat problem later. We should finish this mission first and get back as soon as possi—”

“Hey, y’all.”

A small portion of Theology flinched at the sudden and loud voice. “Katherine?” Janice asked when their archiver’s face appeared again. She looked relatively unscathed, save for the three large tears in the fabric near the collar of her uniform and the large paw print on one cheek. “What happened?”

Albus appeared to be perfectly fine now, half of his body visible at the bottom of the screen as he slept soundly. Loud snores rumbled from his entire being.

“I accidentally fed him something that wasn’t his food,” Katherine said almost sheepishly. “It was a magic-boosting pill. The bag was placed on top of the cat food bag, so a few must’ve dropped inside by accident.” In one hand was the pill in question, which she held up for the party to see. It was as small as a piece of cat food—no wonder Albus ate it. “His body couldn’t handle so much magic and cut off our call. False alarm, guys. Continue on.”

The call ended abruptly after that, leaving seven people to stare blankly and confusedly at each other. “So my cat isn’t possessed,” Sally stated. She nodded as if to further confirm her words.

“We should probably use that box Santa gave us,” Nic suggested, “while we’re still safe.”

Sally took out the small box and examined it from all corners, then passed it to Dat, who passed it to Han after looking at it and so on. It went around like the attendance roster when their high school teacher was absent. 

“It was empty when I shook it,” Han said. “How would that work?”

“Maybe it takes effect as soon as we open it?” Janice suggested with a shrug. “Dat, I leave it to you.”

Dat pointed to himself. “Why me?”

“You’re our tank,” Tiffany said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

At the same time, Cecilia said, “You’re the least likely to die.”

Dat was unfazed. He lightly shook the box to test its contents, since there was some weight to it, but no sound came out no matter how hard he shook, much to his confusion. “What if I'm the only one who gets the buff, then?” With an evil smile, the tank made a move to open the box.

“If you do, you’re tanking through everything and facing the Grinch alone,” Tiffany deadpanned. “I’ll just heal you from the farthest distance possible.”

“And if it’s in a room?”

Tiffany didn’t even bat an eyelash. “I’ll heal you through the door.”

“I guess everyone could stand close to Dat when he opens it? Just in case it’s not something tangible.” Han gathered everyone around until they stood in a circle, with Dat in the centre. They were all still hidden behind the boulders, so there was no need to worry about nearby monsters for the time being. “Maybe this works?”

Dat didn’t wait for a reply and ripped off the ribbon and wrapping paper in one smooth motion. When he lifted the lid, red and green light spilled out from the inside, spreading in the air and engulfing the entire party in a mass of blinding, Christmas-coloured blurs. Moments later, it faded away and left behind an empty box that also disappeared in the following seconds.

“Did anyone feel anything?” Janice asked, squinting around. Her vision was still filled with spots as she blinked rapidly, blindly feeling around. “I feel oddly different for some reason.”

“Wait, lemme check the stats,” Tiffany said, looking down at the boxes on the bottom of her vision. Everything looked the same at first glance, but upon zeroing in on the numbers and symbols next to everyone’s names, her mouth opened in disbelief. “Uh… y’all?”

Sensing that something was off, everyone glanced at the party’s stats as well. Janice was the first to break the silence.

_ “What is this?!!” _ she screeched, pointing at what they assumed was her own stats box. “Why am I a _ Thief Clown Magician??? _” Looking down at herself, she let out another horrified yell. “What am I wearing??!”

Tiffany made a noise that sounded oddly like a mixture of a laugh and a cough. Immediately after, Cecilia burst into a fit of laughter as she lifted a shaky hand to point at the sorceress, all the while doing a poor attempt at smothering her giggles with her other hand. Her cry was almost drowned out in the sea of laughs when everyone sans Janice began to cackle madly like some evil villain.

“Stop laughing!” Janice hissed with a scathing glare. When her attempts to intimidate via looming failed, she hopelessly pulled at her new set of clothes. “What is this??”

“Rags,” Dat stated simply. His face went straight for two seconds as he stared at Janice, then he burst into another round of laughter and nearly toppled to the cold, snowy floor, figure trembling as giggles forced their way out of his mouth nonstop.

Although Janice’s rags were tattered—exposing most of her legs in patches from the knees below and overall looking like a dirty trash bag horribly stitched together—they retained the properties of the Snowquill set, meaning she could still run around without feeling any hint of cold. It was a miracle how the original colours had stayed on with how horrible it looked.

“The condition of your boots make it look like you stole them, you _ thief _,” Dat cackled madly, grin threatening to split his face as he leaned on the boulder for support. The Hal Slate nearly fell to the floor as his hands shook, but he caught it just before it hit the snow. 

“What about Cece!” Janice yelled, making a grand gesture to the former mystic. “She’s balding!”

Tiffany snorted. “What,” she said, turning around. “No she’s not—” When her eyes fell on her sandbox buddy, she stopped and shut her jaw with an audible click. “...”

“Cece?” Han said concernedly as hair continued to fall from Cecilia’s head. There were bald spots forming on the mystic’s already balding forehead. “You… you good there?”

“Maybe,” Cecilia replied. “I’m just. Shock.” She lifted the long robes that reached her ankles and stared blankly at it, completely ignoring the mass of hair that promptly fell off as she dipped her head down. “...”

The mixed reactions she received were varying. Some laughed at her new shiny head, others became concerned, and one in particular stared at the light reflecting off the top of her head with a blank face.

“Cece,” Sally said tentatively, holding up the pile of bananas she had acquired out of nowhere moments before, “do you want a banana?”

All life suddenly returned into Cecilia’s eyes as she snatched the four bananas and peeled them open using only two fingers with the sheer power of determination, alternating her bites between each as she all but shoved them into her mouth. “Banana,” she said monotonously, staring at the banana peels left behind when she finished them all.

Then, her hair grew back.

There was no preamble—within seconds, hair sprouted from her scalp and grew back to its original length in seconds, even revealing a shine and slight poof to prove its healthy state. “My hair!” Cecilia exclaimed, joyously running her hands through her locks. They felt in a better condition than before her balding moment. “All hail Satan!”

“What even is this?” Sally asked no one in particular, holding up her stick that was about as long as her torso. “Somehow I have an unlimited supply of bananas?”

“So…” Tiffany said slowly. “Janice turned into her true form, Cece became a… monk, and Sally a…” She squinted again at the icon beside Sally’s name, trying to make out the small words. “A money tamer…?”

There was a warbled screech from Janice while Cecilia looked absolutely delighted. “Banana???”

“Good,” Dat said, having recovered from his cackling spree moments before. He gestured to Sally and then to Cecilia. “Now she can tame the monkey fool Cece.”

“Yeah—hey! What—” 

“Banana!” Han’s eyes lit up as well. She stalked over to Sally and stretched out both hands as if to accept a holy item. Or maybe to ask for an offering. “Can I get one banana?”

Instead of handing one over, Sally—like the saint she was—kept grabbing more out of thin air until she had a whole pile in her arms. “Here,” she said, dumping them into Han’s hands. “You can have all of these.”

“Woah.” The bananas were heavier than expected, but Han figured it was because her warrior strength somehow decreased after that weird class change. She stored them all into her inventory and kept one, happily munching on it as she examined everyone else.

Sally’s red circus suit seemed hard to move in. Actually—compared to everyone else, Han felt that her clothes were the easiest to fight and jump around with. Instead of long robes, a formal suit, or tattered rags, she had loose, cuffed pants that reached mid-shin, gloves that connected to the ring on her middle finger, and a loose jacket-like top over a loose shirt of some sort. Overall, it looked very dancer-esque, especially with the silk ribbons around her arms.

“Oooo, I’m a dancer,” she said, spinning around and watching the translucent silk flow around her. “This is so cool.”

“I’m… confuse?” Janice muttered, looking back and forth between her teammates and herself. “Why does Nic look like he usually does? And Dat, is that a chef hat??”

When Nic shrugged, glancing down at his t-shirt and jeans from their original world, they all turned to the last two of the group. Tiffany stared blankly at the mop in her hands. “I’m… a janitor… again...” she said, tugging on the janitor outfit she had with a sigh. “...Why must my life be like this.”

Dat’s chef hat continuously threatened to fall off his head each time he adjusted it back into position. It squashed his hair and made it look more like a bowl. “Are these even legit classes?” he asked, looking around at everyone’s clothes. “How can this even be possible.”

“Santa tricked us!” Han gasped as she opened up her status tab in her stats box. Other than the passive buffs from her class, there was nothing new. “This is no buff—it’s a lie!!”

“Do you think he did this on purpose?” Janice asked. “What if we’re stuck like this forever?” A horrified expression crossed her face as she looked down at herself. “I don’t want to be this… a… a _ thief _.” She spat out the last word hatefully as if it ended her entire career (everyone considered her current class to be her real career, but she absolutely refused to acknowledge it).

“I’m a psychic,” Nic simply stated. “That’s very modern.”

“At least you can fight, I think,” Dat said. “I don’t think my class has any combat ability.”

“What’s a monk even supposed to do??” Cecilia asked, wildly waving around her staff, which was the only thing that managed to stay the same. “Am I still a healer?”

What the group didn’t expect was for a beam of light to emerge from the tip of the staff and aim right towards a monster from afar, immediately angering it to the point of calling its pack to attack the party. There was no chance for escape as Theology entered combat mode in the span of seconds. They had nowhere to run to either.

“Cece!” Someone hissed, but no one knew who it was as they were soon surrounded and fighting as much as they could. 

While Nic had an easier time lifting the monsters up and tossing them around with his telekinesis (he only had enough time to read that one skill off his skill tree), the rest were not doing as well.

Cecilia had somehow found a way to cover her entire being with a dome-like shield, preventing any attacks from reaching herself. When the wolves realised they couldn’t reach her, they shifted to tossing and rolling the ball around until it broke. The former healer gave a weak cry and shrunk back inside the shield.

“Why’s Cece’s health so high?” Dat questioned as he pulled out his spatula and blocked a claw, rolling backward when the large arctic wolf lunged at him. “Is she a tank?? She as more HP and defense than my fighter.” He watched Cecilia’s shield shatter into pieces after a few good minutes of being tossed around in a game of ball.

“I dunno,” Han said from beside him. Her ribbons were doing practically no damage, and it took her a while to figure out how to effectively wrap them around a wolf’s neck and choke it to death. The process took a few minutes at most, but at least it was better than nothing. “Wow, my agility is really high—I think it’s higher than my warrior class.”

“Help!” Cecilia and Janice screeched, clinging onto each other as they avoided attacks and ran around. “I’m just a poor person!” Janice continued, seeking refuge behind Nic. “I have no attack power!”

“I can’t help you this time, Janice, sorry.” Tiffany waved her mop around wildly and marveled at the higher damage output, but it was still nothing compared to their original skills. “I can’t believe I’m gonna die here because my only weapon is this mop.”

“I think I got it!” Sally’s voice suddenly filtered over the party chat. Shrill screams of monkeys soon filled the mountain, followed by a horde racing towards them from a distance. “Go!” Sally instructed as she tossed some bananas at the group. She pointed in their direction like some strict military instructor, and a blur of brown covered the snow as several monkeys practically climbed over each other to reach the yellow treats.

The monkeys angrily clawed the wolves to death when their bananas were picked up by the opponents. It lasted barely minutes before the mountain was full of wolf corpses and item drops. The many screeching monkeys danced victoriously around a certain monkey tamer as if expecting to be praised. “Isn’t this a bit too OP?” Sally asked herself as she reached down and gave a banana to a monkey.

“Those wolves are like level one mobs though, aren’t they?” Dat replied. “We’re barely at the base of the mountain, so the monsters should be weakest here, unless they get weaker as we go farther up.”

Han shook her head. “I don’t think that’s possible. Since they’re with the Grinch who lives at the top, they would probably be stronger than the wolves.”

“What should we do then?” Cecilia asked, reading through her skill tree as she was still trying to figure out where her arms were supposed to go in the outfit. “I don’t know anything.”

“Find somewhere safe and figure out everything first,” Nic said. “Look for an area without monsters.”

“Good idea,” Janice said, “but we’re literally in the middle of the arctic. Where would there be somewhere _ safe _ and _ warm _?”

Han pointed a finger to a seemingly random direction. “Uhh, over there?”

Following her finger, Theology saw a campfire surrounded by gates not far from them. It would at most take them around five minutes if they walked by foot. “Wow,” Dat said, voice flat, “a totally safe place at a totally inauspicious location at a totally convenient time. That’s so great.”

“I mean, it’s worth a try?” Han suggested. “It’s better than here, at least.” She glanced around in case there were other monsters lurking in the snow, but all she could see was more blurs of white.

The camp ended up being completely safe and not a trap, much to the party’s delight. There was some kind of barrier around the gates that prevented heavy snow from falling in, giving the atmosphere of a calm, sunny winter day. Small specks of snow gently fluttered to the ground like glitter and covered everything in a thin layer of white. Janice lit a campfire in the center with her magic after they gathered enough stray branches from the trees near the campsite.

“This feels like when we first arrived here,” Sally commented, setting down the Hal Slate beside her when she sat on the log. “Everyone was confused just like this too.” A pause. “And screaming.”

“If it was just another game-related class, I’d be fine with that cus it’s not too much of a change, but” —Dat held out his spatula once again, shaking it confusedly— “is this even possible?”

“I mean, we can’t just assume everything here would work like games,” Janice said. She peered down at her rags with a disgusted look. “I don’t like this either.” 

“So we all know each other’s classes, right?” Sally said. “At least, the names of our classes.”

“It might be easier if we look at our own stats and skills for a moment,” Nic suggested. “Then explain to each other.”

“Nic, your mind.” Cecilia immediately opened up her skill tree and read through the branches of skills, reeling at the amount of new things to learn. She hadn’t felt like this since the first few weeks after being transported to this world. “These are all defense spells??”

“Wait,” Han interrupted, turning to Cecilia in alarm. “We can’t contact Katherine this way.”

“Oh, right!” Janice sat up straight, torso mechanically turning towards the former mystic as well. “She only has it as a mystic!”

Dat quickly opened up his inventory and dug through the contents, looking for the scrolls Katherine gave them a long while back. When he found only one, he held it in his hand and gestured for everyone to move closer. “I only have one—does anyone else have more?”

Six confused and distraught adventurers collectively shook their heads.

“We’ll use this one to contact Katherine and tell her about the class change,” Dat started, already beginning to open up the scroll. “Since the time’s limited, we’ll need to be quick. We can’t rely on her knowledge anymore, only the Hal Slate right here.”

“How long does the scroll last?” Han asked, pointing to the fully unrolled paper in Dat’s hands. “We used it once before, but Katherine ended the call early that time.”

Dat blinked. “Barely five minutes.” He activated the scroll without further delay, and Katherine’s solid face once again appeared in the air. 

“What’s up, guys? Albus is fine, by the way. He woke up sometime ago to catch more birds— wait, what happened to everyone?” She squinted over the party’s clothes before pausing at Janice, face mimicking the former sorceress’s horrified expression from earlier. “Janice! What happened to you?!”

Janice pretended she heard nothing.

“Katherine, listen. We’re using our only communication scroll right now.” Sally waved a hand, stopping their archiver from continuing. “The box Santa gave us somehow changed us into different classes. We’re not sure what’s happening, and we’re too far into the mountain range to go back.”

Katherine frowned. “Does no one have teleport scrolls with you?”

“We usually rely on Cece or Tiff for that, but they’re not healers anymore,” Han replied, gesturing vaguely to said healers’ new outfits. “The only way is to defeat the Grinch like this.”

“I’ll send as much info about the classes I can find to the Hal Slate right now.” Katherine’s eyes flashed an electric blue, and the Hal Slate beside Sally started to glow as well. “I’m not sure how much will be transferred since it’s pretty slow and needs updates.”

“Even the smallest bit of info is good,” Nic said. “We can figure out the rest later.”

Katherine’s eyes flickered over to the background, where the snow had calmed down due to the barrier around the campsite. “I’ll wait for you guys to get back, then. If no one replies or comes back by Christmas, I’ll send some people to—”

The image of Katherine’s face flickered before going out like a small flame in the wind. Her cut-off sentence echoed around the small campsite grounds. Everyone watched as the scroll slowly burned up by itself, fading out of existence as an invisible fire completely consumed the paper.

“The stuff Katherine sent is here.” Sally broke the silence by holding up the Hal Slate. “I can search it up right now.”

“Search up chef,” Dat said. “I wanna know if I can even fight or not.”

Cecilia eyed the spatula with a strange look. “Plot twist, he cooks poisonous food to kill enemies.”

“He does,” Sally said, turning the slate around for everyone to see. “Actually, I’ll just read this to make it easier.

“_ The chef class is a supportive type class specialised in crafting dishes out of materials and monster parts. They have balanced stats overall and are neither suitable for overly offensive or defensive roles. However, with the right tank, chefs can become a DPS-support role in which they cook to buff teammates and themselves while debuffing enemies with poisonous dishes. _” Sally stopped reading and stared at the large unread paragraph. “This is like four pages long.”

“Wait, what—” Dat took the slate and read through the rest of the description with a straight face. When he was halfway done with the types of strategies for chefs, a voice interrupted him.

“There’s… a description for our own classes in the menu at the top of our skill tree…” Janice said. “...It has everything we need.”

Han looked at her hobo-looking teammate in surprise. “Really?” She opened up her skill tree and opened the untouched menu button at the top. Since she’d learned to manually navigate through everything, she had figured there would be no need to open the menu when she could just scroll through by memory. A large paragraph of stats, brief details of her class, and other information instantly appeared in her vision when she selected menu. “Oh!”

“I guess everyone can just read their own stuff first,” Sally suggested, opening her own skill tree menu as well. “We discuss in a few minutes.”

“Wait, I’m noob,” Cecilia said. “I read slow.”

“Me too,” Tiffany said.

Dat gave the slate back to Sally and used the easy-access menu instead. “Then we’ll wait for everyone else to finish before we talk.”

When roughly seven minutes passed, Theology once again gathered around after they had split up to test out some skills. This time, Nic was the first to speak up, much to their surprise.

“I’m a psychic. I can, uhh, do a lot of those telekinesis things, teleportation, and other skills. There are limits to how much I can lift and how far or how many people I can teleport with, but they’re otherwise very offensive.” He paused, thinking of anything else that had been missed. “I’m still a DPS. High attack, lowish defense, high magic, low speed.”

“Ohh, that’s cool,” Han said, eyes lighting up when Nic demonstrated by lifting one hand and placing a weird transparent aura over Dat. The latter floated two feet in the air before disappearing and reappearing a short distance away. “So it’s like Cece’s yeeting skill?”

“Almost.” Nic stared back at her and prompted for someone else to speak.

“I’m a dancer,” Han said excitedly. “Which is cool, since most of the skills are like dance moves. My agility is even higher than my warrior, but I’m mainly support. These ribbons” —she gestured to the silk ribbons wrapped around her arms— “are for tying down opponents with my speed so others can kill it. They’re also for buffs I cast when I dance for moral support. I can attack as well, but the damage is pretty low. I have a decent amount of magic and low defense. Like Janice’s sorceress low.”

Janice let out an indignant squawk before realising it was her turn. “I’m… _ that _. I don’t have any fighting capabilities at all. My speed is as high as a warrior, but my attack, defense, and magic are all low…”

“Do you… have a role then?” Sally asked tentatively. “Sneak attacks? Anything like that…?”

“...” Janice squinted bitterly at one of the only two skills on her skill tree. “I steal. That’s it. Apparently I can turn myself and everyone else in the party invisible too, but it’s only visually. It doesn’t hide scents or our physical bodies or anything.”

“I mean, you can, uhh,” Cece paused, unsure of what to say. “You can steal from bosses! Steal their weapons so everything’s easier for us!”

Although it provided no consolation whatsoever, Janice accepted it with a grumble. “I guess.”

“Yes, have Janice harness the power of her true, inner thief and debuff everyone by taking their essentials.” Dat nodded approvingly, gesturing for Sally to speak as he ignored the yelling beanpole in hobo clothes.

“My role is what happened in that earlier battle,” Sally explained, calling a monkey over from out of nowhere. She fed it a banana and ignored the pleading eyes of Cecilia. “I can command up to 60 monkeys—don’t ask where they come from, I don’t know either—to do anything for me as long as I have bananas. Which I’ll always have.” A pause. “I also have an unlimited supply of bananas for some reason.”

“Banana!” Han took out the bunch of bananas from before and happily peeled one to eat. She stored the rest back into her inventory for later.

Sally nodded and handed her some more. When Cecilia practically begged for one, she finally relented and gave her the smallest one of the bunch. “Basically, I just command monkeys from afar and have no combat abilities. If I toss bananas at the enemy and they pick it up, they’ll consider that thievery and attack in anger. It doesn’t count if party teammates pick them up, though.” After a moment, she followed the others and added, “High attack, low magic, medium defense, low speed.”

“Your monkeys are cute, Sally,” Janice said, leaning down to pet one on the head. The monkey gave a soft _ heehoo _ and scrambled up her leg to perch on her shoulder. It munched on the banana in a similar manner to Han’s current actions.

“I’m fine as long as they do my bidding.”

“That’s… uh…” Tiffany squinted. “Okay.”

“I’m more curious about Cece’s class,” Han said. “What caused her to become like that?”

Janice’s thoughts went back to the moment Cecilia’s hair fell off and shuddered. “I can’t believe Cece actually went bald for like two seconds.”

“Maybe this supposed buff was revealing our true classes all along,” Dat quipped, looking around at everyone. “I mean, I don’t mind being a chef. It showed Janice’s inner thief and Cece’s baldness.” He gestured to Tiffany with a blank face. “Tiff’s a trash collector, but she may as well pick up herself.”

Tiffany gasped, offended. “How dare—excuse you?”

“Cece, are you still a healer?” Janice asked, gesturing to the staff that remained the same through this mess. “You still have your original weapon.”

Cecilia’s fading eyebrows furrowed as she stared at her skill tree. “I have the same weapon, but the skills are different. It says I’m a tank class.”

Everyone: “...”

“Cece, a tank??” Dat blinked several times, still trying to process the words. “We’re doomed.”

“It says I can create complex shields, barriers, and other buffs to increase defense as I tank, but I don’t even know anything,” the former healer cried out in distress. “I barely learned how to heal two weeks ago.”

“Are your stats any good?” Nic asked, glancing over her robes thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s easier than it looks.”

“Several of the spells require chain skills and specific orders. My defense and health are high, but everything else is low—well, except for my magic. That’s medium.” Cecilia deadpanned. “Someone save me.”

“Oh, oof,” Han said. “Maybe it’ll get less complicated when you fight some more. That’s what happened to us in the beginning.”

Dat flicked Cecilia on the forehead. “Noob.”

“What do you even have anyways??” Cecilia half-screeched. “Your class is the least legit out of all of us!”

“Not compared to her.” Dat jabbed a finger at Tiffany, who promptly ignored him. “Basically all I do is take materials—it doesn’t matter as long as I can cook it—and create things out of them. I can do it mid battle and summon an automatic pot-pan-thing to cook. If I poison it, I can give it to enemies for damage over time. All my stats are medium.” He gestured for the last person to go with an ominous smile.

“I’m a janitor. Kinda high attack, everything else medium.” Tiffany stared sadly at her mop. “It’s like I’m some decent martial arts student that graduated and couldn’t find a job, so now I’m working as a janitor. Tragic.”

“So has everyone read through their skill trees yet?” Dat asked the party, and when he received five different motions of agreement, he stood up and pat off the snow piled on his head, shoulders, and knees. “We’ll stay here for the night and set off tomorrow morning. It’s almost Christmas soon—try to learn most of your skills tonight so we can move more quickly.”

With that, they split up and moved to do their own things around the campsite.

“Tiff, is that a hammock?” Han asked when the current janitor pulled out something from her inventory.

“Uh, yeah. I have like three in my inventory. I meant to pull out the tents… whoops.”

“You have tents??” Dat said, wandering to the corner where the other two were conversing. He happened to overhear the conversation, which wasn’t that much of a surprise considering the small size of the camp, but it was the content that caught his attention. “Why do you even have tents?? Where’d they come from?”

“I think I bought them a while back or something in Ruta village.” Tiffany shrugged. “I dunno. There’s like eight lying in my inventory.”

“Wait, then how many spaces do you have left in your inventory?” Dat asked suspiciously. “Tiff, I swear if you hoarded—”

Tiffany quickly shushed him with a kick and a hissing noise. “No.”

“Oooo, are those tents?” Janice's voice called out. She ran to the fabric still laying on the ground. “Theology camping trip!”

“There’s enough for everyone,” Han said as she separated the tents and handed one to Janice. “We don’t have to sleep on the snow now.”

Janice held the tent and stared at it for a while. Tents were technically considered too modern for this world, but she had no idea if they passed by any places that sold them. “Whose are these?”

Han and Dat pointed to Tiffany, who was pulling out more from her inventory.

“Of course it’s her, she always hoards stuff.” Dat sighed. “At least it helped us this time.”

“Is that a tent?” From behind the group, Cecilia joined with a monkey perched atop her head. Both were munching on a banana. “Where’d they come from?”

Once again, several fingers pointed to the hoarder.

“Oh. Makes sense.”

Han clapped her hands and began to set up the first tent. “Camping trip!! Do you think we can use the hammocks next time?” she asked, gesturing to the singular hammock still laying on the snow beside the pile of tents.

“Maybe when the weather’s not this cold,” Cecilia replied. “Sleeping in trees is killing my back.”

“You already have scoliosis, rat,” Dat said, watching their janitor store the hammock back into her inventory. He pointed at the pile of unset tents and gestured to Cecilia like one would a tame animal. “Now go help us set up the tents.”

“Wait,” Janice interrupted, arms halting midway in sticking a pole to the ground. “No sleeping bags or anything?”

“That’s luxury for the rich.” Sally pointed to her own tent that she had finally managed to set to stay up. “I don’t think any of us were preparing to camp like this when we accepted the mission.”

“You right.”

Night fell quickly as they chatted away for the rest of the day. Some spent their time looking over their skills while others wandered a distance away to experiment with their new classes. No one had to stay up and watch over the group since they were perfectly safe inside whatever the barrier around the camp was made of. Oddly enough, there was no sign of the moon that night—only darkness surrounded on the small tents of the sleeping party.

———

On the morning before _ The Grand Day _(which was dubbed by Han after the sandbox duo insisted on giving a name), Theology departed from the bottom of the hill and slowly hiked their way up top. Aside from the dense forest of trees, deep snow, and the occasional arctic critter, the mountain was almost empty of monsters. The few wandering creatures found would be killed in seconds.

“I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Cecilia said as she stabbed yet another polar bear. “I… poke...?”

When a gang of polar bears decided to attack her all at once, she generated a shield and hid pathetically behind it, watching her teammates kill them as the remaining monsters scratched at her invisible wall of protection.

“At least you’re doing more damage than those two.” Dat pointed to Janice and Tiffany, who were combining their few brain cells to execute joint attacks in hopes of boosting their power. To the side, Han twirled around as she tried to cast support skills while maintaining her balance on the uneven slopes of the hill. Her early attempts had made her look like a plastic trash bag fluttering in the wind, but this time, she resembled more of a professional dancer, expertly jumping around and tossing buffs left and right.

“Look,” Dat said again, turning to their former healers, “even Han’s buffing us better than the two of you combined.”

Cecilia, who was trying her best to not get mauled: “...”

Tiffany, who had long given up after her mop split in half: “...”

These polar bears were popping up more frequently, and compared to the wolves form earlier, they were more powerful too. The party took it as a sign of nearing the town and pushed forward. Obviously, no one was used to their classes yet (Nic seemed to have the easiest out of them all, but that was only because he could simply think and everything else would be done for him. He still had a hard time dodging with the new class’s slow speed, though), so that was how they ended up being cornered by a group of polar bears when the town was finally in view.

“What am I supposed to do with this??” Janice complained as she held out her empty hands helplessly. She searched through the tattered pockets in hopes of finding any weapons—because she refused to believe her only skills were sneaking around and lock picking—only to find… a lock pick. “I’m—” She shoved it back into the pocket in silence.

“Nic, can you do anything about them?” Sally asked, tossing more bananas at the slowly approaching horde of white. There were mooing noises from the polar bears, which initially sounded funny but became more threatening the closer they approached. “Like, I don’t know, toss them somewhere?”

Nic shook his head. “I’m out of mana,” he said, managing to lift one singular polar bear and flinging it off the mountain. “Han’s mana replenishing skills aren’t enough—it’s taking too much to move this many.”

“Didn’t Sally’s banana grow back Cece’s hair earlier?” Dat grunted as he stopped a polar bear from clawing his face off with a kick. He waved his spatula intimidatingly and cooked up a few poisonous dishes to stuff in the polar bears’ mouths. They screeched as the toxins dealt a large amount of damage over time. “It took her four to grow back everything, right?”

“Maybe it has restorative or buffing properties,” Nic suggested, dodging left before creating a barrier to block an attack for Janice.

Cecilia heard the word _ banana _ and immediately snapped her head towards Sally, still hidden inside the barrier she created since the start of the battle. _ “Banana?” _

When the current wave of polar bears dwindled down, Janice hurriedly took a handful from Sally and tossed it at their new tank. She didn’t care what the bananas did as long as they got rid of those monsters. “Quick, there’s another wave coming!” 

Cecilia caught one between her teeth like a dog and grabbed the rest with her hands. The entire bunch was inhaled in seconds. Everyone stared at her, hoping for some change before the second wave of polar bears could get to them.

“Cece?” Han asked tentatively when the crazy banana girl began to twitch, almost in a similar manner to Albus during yesterday’s discussion. “Cece…?”

Golden light poured out of Cecilia and enveloped her whole being. Through the blinding light, they could vaguely see her figure growing larger, and larger, and…

“Are those—” Sally covered her face with a hand and squinted between the gaps of her fingers. “Is it just me, or is Cece growing muscles?”

Even the incoming polar bears were frightened by the sudden light. They stood a good distance away from Cecilia, who was still covered in yellow and growing as seconds passed. When the light finally receded, they stared dumbfoundedly at the sight before them.

What was this!! Since when were humans able to grow as large as them!! Is this allowed?!!

Fortunately, Cecilia had been wearing loose robes before this. If she had an outfit like Sally’s or Nic’s, it probably would’ve been torn to shreds by now. Janice waddled over to Han and nudged her, blinking several times at her teammate. “Am I blind or did Cece just turn buff?”

Cecilia gave a growl and flexed, successfully scaring away some polar bears. The ones near the front shrunk back in fear.

Everyone watched in baffled silence as Cecilia ran towards the group of polar bears like a marathoner and took them out with a few punches and kicks. She even tossed them far down the mountain for good measure, huffing as the last polar bear fled with a weak screech. Her eyes were still glowing yellow, and her figure resembled those buff bodybuilder in advertisements the more everyone looked.

“The true buff boi,” Sally whispered to no one in particular. Han gave a snort that was quickly muffled by her hand.

They all watched Cecilia grabbed the fleeing polar bear by the scruff of its neck. She looked at it right in the eyes, glaring, and the monster gave a small whine as it struggled in her grasp. When the final polar bear was finally exterminated, silence fell over the group. No one from either side made a movement; Cecilia was still staring at the spot where the last polar bear died while everyone else stared at her back.

No one dared to say anything when her hair fell off again, leaving her shiny bald head that reflected the morning sun’s rays.

It felt like almost an eternity before she reverted into her original body with a puff of smoke, but her head remained as bald as ever. Tiffany could almost hear the ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ*_ bling bling _*･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ each time the sunlight reflected off her sandbox buddy’s bald head.

Cecilia stared at her party.

Everyone stared back, face equally blank.

“...” The current tank expressionlessly picked up her fallen staff and headed towards the town without another word.

In the future, this incident was never spoken of again.

———

Reaching the town was easy. Entering the town by covering themselves with an invisibility spell from Janice was easy. Entering the Grinch’s town building, which was essentially a mayor’s house, was not easy.

“Why are there like seven locks??” Tiffany whispered incredulously, staring at the locked back door of where the Grinch supposedly lived. “That’s four too many?”

Han turned to her, eyes wide. _ “Four?” _

Dat pushed Janice forward and gesture to the locks on the door with an expectant look. “Go on.”

When he didn’t elaborate any further, Janice motioned for him to continue. “Do what?”

“Pick those locks,” Dat said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Harness your true thief abilities and pick them.”

“I’m _ not _ a _ thief, _” Janice insisted, but she was already taking out her lock pick. “How many times do I have to say this.”

“Okay, a _ Clown Thief Magician _, then.”

“For the last time—” Janice cut herself off. There was no need to bother with him, she told herself. After all this is over, she won’t have it haunt her again.

The thief reached out the hand that wasn’t holding the lock pick to take a proper look at the keyhole. She didn’t expect for it to click open right before her hands even touched it.

“...”

“So this is the power of a Clown Thief Magician,” Dat commented in awe. “Janice is truly worthy of this position—she’s even picking locks with a mere glance!”

Janice sent him a glare and poked the rest of the six locks. Just like the first one, she didn’t even need the lock pick to open them properly. The door swung open without a single sound, and everyone filed in without any regards to the possible danger in the place.

“This is… um…” Sally wasn’t sure what to say as looked up at the spiral stairs that seemed almost endless. “Was the outside this tall?” She moved back a few steps and peered at the top of the building, but the outside showed at most two floors, while the inside said otherwise.

“Maybe it’s a dimensional thing. Or an illusion.” Dat shrugged and trudged up the stairs, motioning for the rest to follow. “We should get going before it’s Christmas.”

The stairs were steep and narrow. There was barely enough room for two people to walk up side by side without squishing their shoulders together. The party made their way up with Cecilia and Dat in the front, Han, Sally, and Janice in the center, and Tiffany and Nic in the back. Their tank would shield the party should anything attack from the front, and if enemies came from the back, their most defensive DPS would take care of it.

After walking for almost five minutes, Janice breathed out, “This is the most amount of exercise I’ve gotten this year.”

“How long until we reach the top?” Han glanced down below her, but all she could see was more stairs. “What if this is an infinite loop?”

“Impossible,” Nic interjected.

“What?”

“Up.” Nic pointed upwards, and Han’s gaze followed to the sliver of light that shone through a crack between the stairs.

“I was about to say my joints are dying since they usually do at this point,” Sally started, “but they aren’t. This world’s me is really getting a lot of exercise.”

“I’m just surprised at how Janice is still walking in those.” Cecilia pointed to the heels on Janice’s feet with a look of amazement. “I could never.”

A small, shrill noise greeted them when they reached the top of the stairs. In the throne-like room, on a two-stair platform was a singular throne sat atop five wheels like a modern chair, its back facing the party. Empty armours lined up against the walls on the side, standing straight and imposing as if they would come to life at any time. A wide purple carpet created a path towards the throne in the center of the room.

“Rudolf?” Han gasped, catching sight of the iconic red nose of the reindeer. She hurried over to the bottom left corner of the room, where the animal was being held hostage. Next to him was a large sack of presumably stolen Christmas presents.

When she reached his prison, she stopped. “...”

_ “Help me!” _ Rudolf’s voice echoed in Theology’s heads. The reindeer’s mouth wasn’t moving, but the voice continued to cry for help. _ “The Grinch locked me in this place! Help, please!!” _ For a more emotional effect, Rudolf even gazed up at them with pitiful eyes.

Everyone: “...”

“You know…” Cecilia started, breaking the awkward silence, “your so-called prison is literally two poles, right?”

Rudolf looked at her from between the two metal poles stabbed into the concrete ground. They were as tall as Cecilia herself, which wasn’t much when the reindeer was practically her height without the antlers. The gap between the poles were wide enough for him to squeeze between too.

_ “The Grinch locked me up here!” _ Rudolf stressed again as if he hadn’t heard her words. _ “Please help me!!” _

“You can literally turn sideways and walk out from the side,” Sally deadpanned. “It’s literally wide enough for two of you to fit.”

Rudolf turned his pitiful eyes to the side, and as if suddenly realising something, he stared at the large gap in shock. “Σ(ﾟДﾟ).”

Han stared at the reindeer speechlessly.

“Do we just take back the presents and Rudolf now?” Janice asked, moving to gather the spilled presents back into the sack. She handed it to Rudolf, who stepped out of the ‘prison’ and held the open end of the bag in his mouth.

_ “Thank you for saving me!” _ He chirped happily, shaking his head thankfully. _ “I’ll notify Santa right away!” _

“That fast?” Cecilia asked. “Wait, you could communicate with Santa this whole time?”

Rudolf once again ignored her words and stared at her shiny bald head instead. _ “I’ll make sure Santa gives you hair too! You can kill someone with the amount of light it reflects.” _

“...”

Without a parting word, he clicked his hind legs together and rammed straight into the wall, busting a large hole in the bricks. He then jumped off the ledge and ran in the air. It took him a few seconds to disappear completely from view. The party assumed he was heading straight towards Santa’s direction and collectively sighed.

“Uh…” Dat looked at his party, who were all staring dumbfoundedly at the hole in the wall as well. “Aren’t we supposed to fight the Grinch and everything?”

An evil cackle suddenly echoed in the room. Everyone turned towards the source, which was the chair in the middle of the platform. It slowly spun around to reveal a hunched figure slowly petting a cat on its lap. “I see you have arrived,” the mysterious figure announced, waving his arm dramatically. His voice sounded oddly familiar.

“Dude, you’re like minutes too late,” Tiffany said, pointing towards the hole in the wall. “Rudolf already escaped.”

“This is a horribly-timed villain reveal,” Han added, hands resting on her hips as she frowned at him disapprovingly. “I’m rating you one star out of ten. At least you got the cat right.”

Sally shook her head. “Albus is better.”

The cat, as if on cue, jumped off the Grinch’s lap and scurried to a litter box in the opposite corner. The Grinch stood up from the throne and slowly approached them, back straight and head held high as he walked menacingly. “No matter,” he said, “I’ve already achieved my plan.”

Janice raised an eyebrow. “And that is…?”

“Not telling!” the Grinch hissed. “Why would I tell you?”

“Because you let Rudolf escape and don’t want to admit it,” Dat replied. When the Grinch gave no response, he sighed.

“Shut up!”

The Grinch tore off his cloak to reveal a human figure. It was hard to see in the dimly lit room, but as he stepped into the light that traveled through the hole in the wall, everyone gasped. Cecilia pointed a finger at the Grinch and yelled, “It’s Dat!”

“But a chunkier version,” Sally added.

Janice pointed at the Grinch’s nose. “And a pointier nose. He could stab someone with that.”

Dat stared at his almost doppelganger in confusion. They looked almost the same, with the same clothes, same face, and even the same form of standing, except the Grinch had a pair of kitty paw powerfists, cat ears, and the previously mentioned minor differences. Dat slowly raised his hand, as if preparing for an attack, and expressionlessly pointed his finger at The Grinch.

The Grinch immediately moved to a defensive state. Even the members of Theology were watching Dat in anticipation. After all, they knew he had no attack skills powerful enough to take out the big boss so quickly, so what kind of trick did he have up his sleeve this time?

“That…” Dat started. His finger moved slightly to point at the kitty paw powerfists. “I want those.”

The Grinch blinked. “What.” 

“Gimme those kitty paws,” Dat repeated. “I want them.”

Before the Grinch could even refuse, Dat had already walked up to him and forcefully tugged the powerfists off his hands. Consequently, a pair of cat ears grew from Dat’s head, and he immediately threw a punch at the Grinch’s face. “How dare you impersonate me,” Dat bellowed, though he only did a measly two damage—the weapons weren’t for suitable his current class. “There can only be one Dat.”

“You…!” Face contorting, the Grinch lunged at Dat, only to be blocked by an invisible shield of sorts. He turned his head to glare at Cecilia, who was already in a defensive stance.

Dat gave the signal. “Everyone attack!”

While everyone was trying their best to fight against the Grinch, their new classes provided great difficulty with maximum damage output. There was too little time for them to adjust to their new skills, and their tank wasn’t doing too well as she cast barrier after barrier trying to defend everyone, draining her mana in seconds.

A rather hard kick sent Sally flying against a set of armour against the wall. She was thankful they didn’t come alive, but the swords and sharp edges pressed uncomfortably against her back. She hissed in pain and attempted to tug out a piece of armor stuck in her leg, wincing at the large scratch it left behind. Several monkeys swarmed around their leader in worry, but Sally waved them off and commanded another attack.

“Sally!” Han sent her a buff that increased her defense, but her lack of a single healing spell was the most worrying.

“I’m good,” Sally grunted, fishing out a banana and tossing it towards the Grinch. Several monkeys rushed at him, but they were only able to deal some damage before being batted away with a hand.

Nic ran around the Grinch’s blind spots and catapulted monkeys towards the boss with his telekinesis powers. He couldn’t do much other than physically restraining some of the Grinch’s movements for a few seconds, allowing for the rest of the party to attack. The Grinch was too heavy for him to lift, so tossing him around like he did to the polar bears were out of the question.

Janice dodged a fist but couldn’t avoid the sweeping kick that hit the back of her knees. Her legs buckled underneath her, and she fell with a screech as her arms flailed behind her. Tiffany quickly rushed to her aid and took out a broom to block an attack for the hobo thief. “You good there?” she grunted, pushing back the arm and whacking it a few times.

Janice slowly stood up. “Yeah.”

Taking their momentary distraction as an advantage, the Grinch grabbed the janitor’s broom and flung her towards Han, knocking them both to the ground. Cecilia quickly cast a shield over the three to block the incoming fist. “Where’s Dat??” she yelled out, but there was no response.

The Grinch suddenly paused in his movements and stared at something on the opposite side of the room. Everyone looked over as well, wondering what had caused such a large distraction.

It was Dat.

He stood next to the cat’s litter box, staring at the Grinch unblinkingly with a pair of blank eyes. Right on the centre of the litter box was a large pile of poop. 

Dat opened his mouth.

“Your girlfriend is dead.”

It seemed like time began to move again after he spoke. The Grinch inhaled deeply, as if the words triggered a violent memory, but he doubled over without warning and proceeded to hack out his lungs. He twitched violently and collapsed to the floor. To the side, Sally wondered incredulously: what’s with everyone and seizures today??

The rest of Theology stared at the dying villain.

“You…” the Grinch started, but he was unable to finish as he collapsed to the floor and died. Like every other monster, his body disintegrated and left behind nothing.

It was also at this time when another flash of light engulfed the group. When it dissipated, they saw that everyone had returned to their normal classes. Janice looked down at her dress and spun around happily. “My dress is back!!”

“That was interesting,” Nic commented, watching the hole in the wall repair itself. 

“Never again,” Janice sighed. “That was _ horrible. _”

Cecilia reached for her head and gasped when she grabbed a handful of wavy locks. “My hair!” she screeched, sounding like the monkeys Sally had commanded moments before. As if that wasn’t enough, she jumped around and screeched some more.

“What a monkey queen,” Han commented from the side.

“I’m surprised the Grinch kept a straight face,” Tiffany said, hiding away her stick. “I nearly laughed when he revealed to be Dat’s clone.”

“Not a clone,” Dat insisted, face showing pure disdain. “He ugly.”

“Yeah, like you.” Cecilia gestured to his face. “You’ve always been ugly.”

“No u.”

“No u.”

“No u—”

———

“My friends, you’ve returned!” Santa joyously stepped down from the sleigh as it landed, Rudolf standing next to him as he pulled the red thing towards the guild headquarters. “How was it? I heard from Rudolf you defeated the Grinch!”

“Yeah, we just finished reporting back to Katherine,” Han replied, petting Albus as he sat in her arms. “Right before Christmas too.”

Santa did his _ hoh hoh hoh _laugh and rummaged through the sack in his sleigh. “I must thank you for your efforts!” He took out an unknown box and pointed to the Hal Slate. “If you don’t mind?”

Sally handed the slate over. “What do you intend to do with it?”

“An upgrade, of course!” Santa said. “This is ancient technology, after all. It’ll get slow if it doesn’t upgrade.”

He handed the slate back with a satisfied huff. “There! Better quality!”

Janice opened the camera-like function and held it up to look at the scenery. Her eyes immediately lit up. “It’s so clear!” she gushed, handing it to Han and Sally to see. “It looks like the quality of the newest phones!!”

Santa turned to Dat this time and snapped his fingers. With a puff of smoke, the kitty paw powerfists from earlier returned, condition new as ever. “This is for you.”

_ “What!” _ Cecilia shrieked. “I went bald _ twice _ and everything, and he gets a present?!”

“Life’s tough, kid.” Santa shrugged. “Maybe next time.”

_ “Thank you again for saving me!” _ Rudolf added from the side, completely ignoring the earlier conversation. He clapped his front hooves against the ground and happily shook his head again.

“Wait, hold up.” Just like the morning of the day before, Janice held up her hand and squinted at Santa. “About the ‘buff’ you gave us—”

“Ah, yes, it worked very well, didn’t it?” Santa interrupted. His movements seemed hurried as he clambered up the sleigh. “Well, it’s a one-time thing, so don’t expect too much from me next time.”

Rudolf shook his head. _ “He accidentally swapped the buff with some pranking spell and doesn’t want to admit it,” _ he sniggered, not bothering to conceal anything. _ “No wonder everyone looked like peasants.” _

Janice screeched and pointed an accusing finger at Santa. “You were the source of my problems!” she hissed.

Santa quickly lifted the sleigh and motioned for Rudolf to prepare for another flight. He seemed to become more nervous as he avoided Janice’s eyes. “M-Merry Christmas!!” he said, to which Janice responded with an indignant huff.

“That’s tomorrow.”

Giving a nervous _ hoh hoh hoh_, Santa flicked his wrist and directed for the sleigh to shoot off into the air. He left behind glitter that rained on the party and covered their heads and shoulders.

Katherine looked at Albus, who had been returned into her arms, and ran a hand over his fur. “I missed a lot, didn’t I.”

Underneath the sweater, Albus meowed.


	6. April Fool's Special

Bold of you to assume I'd post on time


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